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phatic functions in the brain

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The majority of deficits related to the parietal lobe belong to the category of phatic (amnestic aphasia, alexia, agrafia, and acalculia), gnostic and practical deficits.  Deficits in phatic functions develop with damage to the posterior portion of the parietal lobe in the dominant hemisphere and clinical pictures of gnostic functions are not strictly related to the dominant hemisphere. - From "Clinical Rehabilitation" by Pavel Kolar, et al., p. 95
Here the word "phatic" seems to mostly describe linguistic behavior (vocabulary, text understanding, ability to write); the acalculia case seems slightly different from the others.  All of these issues have to do with the parietal lobe, which includes a somatosensory cortex, and which has strong connections to the thalamus.

During maturation of the parietal lobe centers, one's body awareness (somatesthesia) is formed, as well as, its relation to the surroundings.

Even so it is clearly related to language as well, as we see above.  It's interesting to compare the other classes of deficits (pp. 95-96).

Gnostic: autotopagnosia (cannot recognise own body parts), anosognosia (not aware of one's own deficit), asomatognosia (unaware of part of the body), astereognosis (cannot recognize shapes), hemihypesthesia (slight deficit of tactile sensation on one side of the body); pain asymbolia (can distinguish the quality of pain but does not react to it).  Also recognizing color, sound, faces, movement, and other tactile deficits.

Practical: deficit in the performance of a learned task (e.g. plan is preserved but execution is disrupted), movements are clumsy and no plan is formed; the task cannot be understood.

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