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Published online: 20 September 2016
© The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Given the current debates about the precise functional role of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in egocentric and exocentric perspective taking, in the present study we manipulated activity in the rTPJ to investigate the effects on a spatial perspective-taking task. Participants engaged in a mental body transformation task, requiring them to mentally rotate their own body to the position of an avatar, while undergoing anodal, cathodal, or sham transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the rTPJ. As a control task, participants judged the laterality of a stimulus feature with respect to a fixation cross on the screen. For the first half ofthe experiment (only during online tDCS), a task-selective effect oftDCS was observed, reflected in slower reaction times following anodal than following cathodal and sham tDCS for the mental body transformation task, but not for the control task. The effects of tDCS were most pronounced for stimuli implying a more difficult mental body transformation. No effects oftDCS were observed during the second half ofthe experiment. The effects of tDCS were most pronounced for participants scoring low on aberrant perceptual beliefs and spiritual transcendence, suggesting a relation between third-person perspective taking and bodily and perceptual experiences. The finding that anodal stimulation of the rTPJ impairs third-person perspective taking indicates a key role of this region in exocentric spatial processing.
Keywords Spatial perspective taking .Mental body transformation task . Transcranial direct current stimulation . Right temporoparietal junction
Introduction
When interacting with others, we often need to distinguish between our own and others' perspectives. For instance, when riding a bike one needs to infer what others can see, while at the same time maintaining a first-person or egocentric perspective to coordinate one's own actions. It has been argued that spatial perspective taking and the ability to switch between firstand third-person perspectives are basic processes that are central to many higher-level social-cognitive processes (Decety & Lamm, 2006). For instance, in classical theory-of-mind tasks one needs to inhibit one's self perspective in order to make inferences about what another person may know or see (Young, Dodell-Feder, & Saxe, 2010). When coordinating a joint action with another person, one needs to...