title: Distinct contributions of extrastriate body area and temporoparietal junction in perceiving one's own and others' body.
abstract: The right temporoparietal cortex plays a critical role in body representation. Here, we applied repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over right extrastriate body area (EBA) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) to investigate their causative roles in perceptual representations of one's own and others' body. Healthy women adjusted size-distorted pictures of their own body or of the body of another person according to how they perceived the body (subjective task) or how others perceived it (intersubjective task). In keeping with previous reports, at baseline, we found an overall underestimation of body size. Crucially, EBA-rTMS increased the underestimation bias when participants adjusted the images according to how others perceived their own or the other woman's body, suggesting a specific role of EBA in allocentric body representations. Conversely, TPJ-rTMS increased the underestimation bias when participants adjusted the body of another person, either a familiar other or a close friend, in both subjective and intersubjective tasks, suggesting an involvement of TPJ in representing others' bodies. These effects were body-specific, since no TMS-induced modulation was observed when participants judged a familiar object. The results suggest that right EBA and TPJ play active and complementary roles in the complex interaction between the perceptions of one's own and other people's body.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, Italy, valentina.cazzato@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Cazzato
authors.forename: Emanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mian
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serino
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mele
authors.forename: Cosimo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Urgesi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult