Centre for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
Neurosci Lett. 2010 Aug 30;481(1):36-40. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2010.06.047. Epub 2010 Jun 22.
A fundamental trait of human beings is the ability to discern information communicated by others. The human body is one of the important sources of such information. To date, several researchers have reported two body-selective regions in the brain-the extrastriate body area (EBA) and fusiform body area. As compared to the number of studies on spatial distribution, studies on the temporal processing of body perception are few. The electroencephalography (EEG) findings of a recent study indicate that observation of the human body induces a remarkable response leading to the generation of event-related-potentials that peak at 190 ms. However, source localization by using EEG has limitations. The advantage of magnetoencephalography (MEG) is that it enables localization of cortical activities and has excellent temporal resolution. In this study, we used MEG to measure the neural responses underlying the perception of the human body. Our results suggest that cortical activation induced by body images was observed in the bilateral EBA region with a latency of 190 ms and right-hemispheric dominance. Our study revealed the regions involved and the latency differences between these regions in body perception. Further, our results show the usefulness of MEG for body perception studies and suggest that like the face, the body plays a unique role in the human recognition process.
人类的一个基本特征是能够辨别他人传达的信息。人体是此类信息的重要来源之一。迄今为止，已有几位研究人员报告了大脑中的两个身体选择性区域——枕外身体区域（EBA）和梭状回身体区域。与对空间分布的研究数量相比，对身体感知的时间处理的研究较少。最近一项研究的脑电图（EEG）发现表明，观察人体会引起显著的反应，导致产生事件相关电位，其峰值在 190 毫秒。然而，使用 EEG 进行源定位存在局限性。脑磁图（MEG）的优势在于它能够定位皮质活动，并且具有出色的时间分辨率。在这项研究中，我们使用 MEG 测量了人体感知的神经反应。我们的结果表明，在 190 毫秒的潜伏期和右半球优势的情况下，双侧 EBA 区域观察到了由身体图像引起的皮质激活。我们的研究揭示了身体感知中涉及的区域以及这些区域之间的潜伏期差异。此外，我们的结果表明 MEG 可用于身体感知研究，并表明与面部一样，身体在人类识别过程中起着独特的作用。
