The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is traditionally viewed as a sensory association area, but recent research suggests it plays a crucial role in higher-level cognitive functions related to action. The PPC contains intentional maps, which are specialized for planning eye movements, reaching movements, and grasping movements. These maps facilitate multisensory integration and coordinate transformations required for sensory-guided movements. Neurons in the PPC respond to both sensory input and motor output, indicating their involvement in sensory-motor transformations. The PPC's activity can be influenced by spatial attention and learning, but these effects are general to cortex and occur in the context of sensory-motor operations. Intention is an early plan for a movement, specifying the goal and type of movement. Intention-related activity in the PPC can be used to operate neural prostheses for paralyzed patients, as demonstrated in preliminary investigations with monkeys. The PPC's role in intention planning is supported by experiments showing that PPC neurons respond to the direction of planned movements, regardless of the sensory modality or motor output. The PPC's activity evolves dynamically to reflect the changing demands of tasks, from sensory to cognitive to motor components. Neurons in areas like LIP and PRR encode intended movements in eye-centered coordinates, independent of the type of movement. This common distributed code allows for the representation of space in multiple reference frames, facilitating the transformation between different coordinate systems. The PPC's ability to compensate for intervening eye movements is also highlighted, with neurons in areas like LIP and PRR adjusting their activity to maintain the correct coding of target locations. Gain fields, which modulate the response fields of neurons by body-position signals, play a crucial role in this compensation. Overall, the PPC's intentional maps and distributed code for intended movements provide a foundation for understanding how the brain plans and executes complex movements, with potential applications in neural prosthetics.The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is traditionally viewed as a sensory association area, but recent research suggests it plays a crucial role in higher-level cognitive functions related to action. The PPC contains intentional maps, which are specialized for planning eye movements, reaching movements, and grasping movements. These maps facilitate multisensory integration and coordinate transformations required for sensory-guided movements. Neurons in the PPC respond to both sensory input and motor output, indicating their involvement in sensory-motor transformations. The PPC's activity can be influenced by spatial attention and learning, but these effects are general to cortex and occur in the context of sensory-motor operations. Intention is an early plan for a movement, specifying the goal and type of movement. Intention-related activity in the PPC can be used to operate neural prostheses for paralyzed patients, as demonstrated in preliminary investigations with monkeys. The PPC's role in intention planning is supported by experiments showing that PPC neurons respond to the direction of planned movements, regardless of the sensory modality or motor output. The PPC's activity evolves dynamically to reflect the changing demands of tasks, from sensory to cognitive to motor components. Neurons in areas like LIP and PRR encode intended movements in eye-centered coordinates, independent of the type of movement. This common distributed code allows for the representation of space in multiple reference frames, facilitating the transformation between different coordinate systems. The PPC's ability to compensate for intervening eye movements is also highlighted, with neurons in areas like LIP and PRR adjusting their activity to maintain the correct coding of target locations. Gain fields, which modulate the response fields of neurons by body-position signals, play a crucial role in this compensation. Overall, the PPC's intentional maps and distributed code for intended movements provide a foundation for understanding how the brain plans and executes complex movements, with potential applications in neural prosthetics.