Figure 1.

An example of two successive trials in the automatic imitation task. A blank screen was followed by a neutral hand stimulus on which the eventual location of the coloured circle was indicated by a white outline of a circle. The coloured circle instructing the response appeared at the same time as the irrelevant finger action stimulus. For participants given orange to index finger and purple to little finger stimulus–response mappings, the first trial is spatially and imitatively compatible, while the second is spatially compatible but imitatively incompatible. Prior to theta-burst stimulation, 144 baseline trials were presented in two blocks (preceded by 24 practice trials). After theta-burst stimulation, 288 trials were presented in four blocks. Each of the four trial types (as listed in table 1) was presented an equal number of times in each block in a pseudo-random order.