The parietal lobe
Parietal lobe · lobus parietalis
The top-back part of your brain that maps touch and tells you where your body is in space.
What it does
The parietal lobe sits under the crown of your head. Its front strip receives touch, temperature and pain signals from every part of the body. The rest combines touch, vision and hearing to build a sense of where you are, where objects are and how to reach for them.
Surprising fact
The body map in this lobe is wildly out of proportion: the lips and hands take up far more space than the whole back, because they are packed with touch sensors.
Why it matters
Damage to the right parietal lobe can make people ignore the left side of the world, so they may eat food only from the right half of the plate without noticing.
Nearby
Read more
Sources
Drafted with AI help; awaiting a human fact-check against these sources.
Open in the 3D atlas · Suggest a correction · Not medical advice.
3D models: Z-Anatomy & BodyParts3D (CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2.1 JP). Card text CC BY 4.0.