Final answer:
Damage to the posterior parietal cortex can impair spatial awareness and attention, visuomotor coordination, and can lead to contralateral neglect, affecting how stimuli are perceived spatially. It might also cause difficulties with sensory integrative tasks such as stereognosis and graphesthesia.
Step-by-step explanation:
Damage to the posterior parietal cortex can lead to a deficit in several sensory integrative functions such as spatial awareness, attention to one's environment, and assigning spatial attention. This part of the brain is also involved in visuomotor coordination, which is crucial for activities like reaching for objects or navigating through space. One specific example of an impairment that can occur is contralateral neglect, where an individual may ignore or not be aware of the space or objects on the opposite side of the damage.
Moreover, damage to this area might also affect double simultaneous stimulation, as part of a mental status exam, where the individual might not perceive a stimulus applied to one side of the body while another stimulus is applied simultaneously on the other side. This indicated deficit commonly points to a problem in the cerebral cortex's ability to process sensory information. Other issues that might arise include difficulties with tasks involving stereognosis (the ability to recognize objects by touch) and graphesthesia (the ability to recognize writing on the skin purely by the sensation of touch).