The role of the right temporo-parietal junction in maintaining a coherent sense of one's body

Abstract

We constantly feel, see and move our body, and have no doubt that it is our own. The brain possesses a distinction between the body and the objects in the outside world. This distinction may be based on a process that monitors whether sensations, events and objects should be attributed to one's body or not. We controlled whether an external object was represented as part of the body or not, by experimentally inducing a bodily illusion using correlated visual and tactile stimulation. We then studied the role of right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) in the processing of multisensory events that may or may not be attributed to one's body. Disruption of rTPJ using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) made the distinction between what may or may not be part of one's body on the basis of multisensory evidence more ambiguous, suggesting that the rTPJ is actively involved in maintaining a coherent sense of one's body, distinct from external, non-corporeal, objects.