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Rhythm makes the world go round: An MEG-TMSstudy on the role of right TPJ theta oscillations inembodied perspective taking
Hongfang Wang a, Eleanor Callaghan a, Gerard Gooding-Williams a,Craig McAllister b and Klaus Kessler a,*
a Aston Brain Centre, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, UKb School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 28 May 2015
Reviewed 14 August 2015
Revised 5 October 2015
Accepted 6 November 2015
Action editor Sven Bestmann
Published online 25 November 2015
Keywords:
Perspective taking
Embodiment
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS)
Temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)
Abbreviations: MEG, Magnetoencephalogrparietal junction.* Corresponding author. Aston Brain Centre,E-mail address: [email protected] (K.
2.2.1. MEG Expt.The employed tasks and stimuli were adopted from Kessler
and Rutherford (2010, Expt. 1). In all stimuli an avatar was
presented seated at a round table shown from one of six
possible angular disparities (see Fig. 1: 60�, 110�, 160� clock-
wise and anticlockwise). The stimuli were coloured photo-
graphs (resolution of 1024� 768 pixels), taken from an angle of
65� above the plane of the avatar and table. The stimulus table
contained four grey spheres (placed around an occluder, cf.
Fig. 1). In each trial one of the spheres turned red indicating
this sphere as the target. From the avatar's viewpoint the
target could be visible/occluded (perspective tracking task) or
left/right (perspective taking task) and participants were asked
to make a judgement according to the avatar's perspective by
pressing the instructed key (Lumitouch® response pads): the
left key for “left” or “visible” targets and the right key for
“right” or “occluded” targets.1 For analysis we collapsed across
correct responses for left and right and across correct re-
sponses for visible and occluded, respectively. We also
collapsed across clockwise and anticlockwise orientations for
each angular disparity, after ensuring that the neural signa-
tures were comparable (no significant differences in source
space).
For each block of 120 trials (8 total per session) participants
were instructed to maintain one of two possible postures as
shown in Fig. 1, bottom right. The participant's posture in any
given block was always congruent with the mental rotation
direction required for half of the trials, while it was incon-
gruent with the other half. A blocked posture was essential for
avoiding movement artefacts in the MEG due to inter-trial
posture adjustments. The two tasks (perspective taking vs
tracking) were recorded in two separate sessions on different
days and the sequence was counterbalanced across
participants.
MEG data were acquired using a Magnes 3600, 248-channel
whole-head magnetometer (4D-Neuroimaging), sampled at
508.63 Hz and band-pass filtered between 0.1 and 200 Hz.
Stimulus resolution was 1024 � 768 pixels covering a visual
angle of 24� horizontal by 18� vertical. We employed an SR
Research remote Eyelink 1000 fort aborting trials (to be re-run
later) where participants blinked or moved their eyes away
from the screen centre (a box of dimensions 140 � 120 pixels,
covering the central target area, see Fig. 1).
1 Note that in Kessler and Rutherford (2010) we found the samebasic pattern of results with vocal responses (“left” or “right” forperspective taking and “in front” or “behind” for perspectivetracking) as with spatially mapped key presses. This is importantas vocal responses do not induce spatially incongruent stimulus-response mappings (see May & Wendt, 2013). Thus, since ourcurrent study replicated the pattern reported in Kessler andRutherford (2010) we are confident that our effects are not dueto spatial incompatibilities in stimulus-response mappings (seealso Kessler et al., 2014). Furthermore Surtees et al., (2013) re-ported a similar posture congruence effect in a task that did notrequire laterality judgements but judgements of visual appear-ance (e.g., does the other person perceive a digit as a “9” or a “6”?).This further rules out stimuluseresponse mappings as aconfound but also indicates that the posture effect is not only tiedto left/right or other directionality judgements but generalises tojudgements of visual experience.
Data were preprocessed & analysed using the Matlab®
While we believe that our findings rather support the former,
we acknowledge that certain forms of joint attention may
predate even simple perspective tracking.
5. Conclusions
Significant aspects of information processing in humans are
not shared with other species. In the social domain such
processes have been typically related to explicitly represent-
ing the subjective experience and mental states of others.
However, some of these unique abilities still seem to depend
on “older” systems such as the body's movement repertoire.
The current research confirmed that the human capacity for
imagining another's perspective of the world is still signifi-
cantly “embodied”, in the sense that humans mentally rotate
their own body representation (body schema) into another'sorientation. Using MEG we found that brain oscillations at
theta frequency, originating from the right pTPJ reflected
cognitive as well as embodied processing elements. This was
subsequently confirmed using TMS, which disrupted
embodied processing effects, pinpointing right pTPJ as the
crucial network hub for transforming the embodied self into
another's viewpoint, body and/or mind. We propose that such
a “transformed embodied self”, projected into another's cir-
cumstances (e.g., their posture, orientation, perspective,
socio-emotional context, etc.), serves as the basis for repre-
senting and understanding others in various social scenarios.
Using state-of-the-art methodology our research elucidates
the embodied origins of high-level social processing in
humans, specifically highlighting the critical role of right pTPJ
and theta oscillations.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Frances Crabbe for help with MRI
scans and MEG data collection at Glasgow University.
Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2015.11.011.
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