Probing the neural representations of body-related stimuli: a reply to Tame & Longo's commentary.

Abstract

The processing of body-related stimuli (e.g., images of bodies -static or in movement) elicits simultaneous activations in visual and sensorimotor brain regions (Hardwick, Caspers, Eickhoff, & Swinnen, 2018; Molenberghs, Cunnington, & Mattingley, 2012; Urgesi, Calvo- Merino, Haggard, & Aglioti, 2007). This activity can be observed over the scalp as a mixture of sensorimotor and visual-evoked potentials (ERPs). Yet, such a mix obstructs the discrete inspection of the underlying neuronal generators. Accordingly, in Galvez-Pol et al., (2020a), we described a method that dissociates these scalp-recorded potentials and allows to examine their distinct contributions. In their constructive and well-thought commentary, Tamè and Longo (2020) highlight three aspects of this work that need to be clarified: i) whether there is a natural border between body and non-body related stimuli; ii) whether neural signals from diverse neuronal sources can be discerned by our method; and iii) whether such a method can be used with other types of stimuli.