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Distinct contributions of extrastriate body area and temporoparietal junction in perceiving one’s own and others’ body

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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.

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Author note

V.C. is now at the Division of Psychology, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK. This work was supported by grants from the Italian Ministry of Health (Progetto Giovani Ricercatori, Prot. No. GR-2008-1137139), the Italian Ministry of University and Research (Bando Futuro in Ricerca 2012, Prot. No. RBFR12F0BD), and the IRCCS “E. Medea” (Ricerca Corrente, Italian Ministry of Health) to C.U. We thank Eleonora Simoni and Serena Siega for assistance with data collection. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as potential conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, Università degli Studi di Udine, Udine, Italy

    Valentina Cazzato, Sonia Mele & Cosimo Urgesi

  2. Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (IRCCS) “E. Medea”, Polo Friuli Venezia Giulia, San Vito al Tagliamento, PN, Italy

    Valentina Cazzato, Sonia Mele & Cosimo Urgesi

  3. Istituto Nazionale di Chirurgia dell’Obesità (INCO), Istituto Clinico Sant’Ambrogio, Milan, Italy

    Emanuel Mian

  4. Center for Neuroprosthetics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Andrea Serino

  5. Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Bologna “Alma Mater Studiorum”, Bologna, Italy

    Andrea Serino

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  1. Valentina Cazzato
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Correspondence to Valentina Cazzato or Cosimo Urgesi.

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Cazzato, V., Mian, E., Serino, A. et al. Distinct contributions of extrastriate body area and temporoparietal junction in perceiving one’s own and others’ body. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 15, 211–228 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-014-0312-9

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