Where are your body parts? A pure case of heterotopagnosia following left parietal stroke.

We studied the involvement of the parietal cortex in interpersonal body representation in a left parietal stroke patient. We used tasks assessing different types of body representations and localization of object parts. The patient performed normally on all tasks of body knowledge. However, she was unable to locate body parts on another person or on body representations. In contrast, she pointed correctly to the same body parts on herself or object representations. The data support the important role of the left parietal cortex in the transformation of intrinsic spatial coding of body parts localization in extrinsic body part coordinates.