RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A causal role of the right superior temporal sulcus in emotion recognition from biological motion JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 079756 DO 10.1101/079756 A1 Rochelle A. Basil A1 Margaret L. Westwater A1 Martin Wiener A1 James C. Thompson YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/07/079756.abstract AB Understanding the emotions of others through nonverbal cues is critical for successful social interactions. The right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS) is one brain region thought to be key in the recognition of the mental states of others based on body language and facial expression. In the present study, we temporarily disrupted functional activity of the rpSTS by using continuous, theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) to test the hypothesis that the rpSTS plays a causal role in emotion recognition from body movements. Participants (N=23) received cTBS of the rpSTS, which was individually localized using fMRI, and a vertex control site. Before and after cTBS, we tested the ability of participants to identify emotions from point-light biological motion stimuli and a non-biological global motion identification task. Results revealed a three-way interaction between cTBS stimulation, stimulation site, and stimulus type,with reduced accuracy of emotion recognition from biological motion following rpSTS stimulation but not following vertex stimulation. Accuracy on the global motion tasks was unaffected by cTBS to either site. These results support the causal role of the rpSTS in decoding information about other’s emotional state from their body movements and gestures.