title: THETA-Rhythm Makes the World Go Round: Dissociative Effects of TMS Theta Versus Alpha Entrainment of Right pTPJ on Embodied Perspective Transformations.
abstract: Being able to imagine another person's experience and perspective of the world is a crucial human ability and recent reports suggest that humans "embody" another's viewpoint by mentally rotating their own body representation into the other's orientation. Our recent Magnetoencephalography (MEG) data further confirmed this notion of embodied perspective transformations and pinpointed the right posterior temporo-parietal junction (pTPJ) as the crucial hub in a distributed network oscillating at theta frequency (3-7 Hz). In a subsequent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) experiment we interfered with right pTPJ processing and observed a modulation of the embodied aspects of perspective transformations. While these results corroborated the role of right pTPJ, the notion of theta oscillations being the crucial neural code remained a correlational observation based on our MEG data. In the current study we therefore set out to confirm the importance of theta oscillations directly by means of TMS entrainment. We compared entrainment of right pTPJ at 6 Hz vs. 10 Hz and confirmed that only 6 Hz entrainment facilitated embodied perspective transformations (at 160° angular disparity) while 10 Hz slowed it down. The reverse was true at low angular disparity (60° between egocentric and target perspective) where a perspective transformation was not strictly necessary. Our results further corroborate right pTPJ involvement in embodied perspective transformations and highlight theta oscillations as a crucial neural code.
authors.affiliation: Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK.
authors.forename: Gerard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gooding-Williams
authors.affiliation: Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK.
authors.forename: Hongfang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK. k.kessler@aston.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7307-9539
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kessler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D015225:Magnetoencephalography / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D013826:Theta Rhythm / Q000502:physiology*; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Embodiment; Perspective takin; Rhythmic entrainment; Tehta oscillations; Temporoparietal junction; Transcranial magnetic stimulation