Disturbances of self–other distinction after stimulation of the extrastriate body area in the human brain

Abstract

In a recent experiment with functional magnetic-resonance imaging, we found that brain activity in the extrastriate body area (EBA) distinguished between observed self- and other-generated movements, being significantly higher during observation of someone else's movement. Here, we investigated further the role of EBA in self–other distinctions using low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). As compared with rTMS applied over a control site, rTMS applied over the EBA increased reaction times, without affecting accuracy, for the detection of other-generated movements. Performance on a control motion-direction detection task was unaffected. These findings provide additional evidence for the role of the EBA in processing information necessary for identifying ourselves as agents of self-generated movements.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank J. Totman for help with fMRI data collection and R. Toro for help with Figure 1. We also thank P. Downing for stimuli of the EBA localizer and M. Wilms for stimuli of the MT localizer. N.D. was supported by a grant of the German Academic Exchange Program (DAAD).