Figure 3.

Magnitude of disruption or facilitation (mean ± SEM) in milliseconds following cTBS targeted at rPoG, rPM and the vertex (experiments 1 and 2). To determine whether the magnitude of impairment following cTBS stimulation differed across the sites and tasks we calculated the difference between the post-cTBS and pre-cTBS baseline reaction times (±3 SDs and all errors removed; and corrected for accuracy) for each condition (i.e., baseline RT/accuracy minus post-cTBS RT/accuracy for each site stimulated across tasks). A disruption in reaction times following stimulation is shown by a negative value and facilitation by a positive value. a, For the emotion discrimination task (experiment 1), participants (n = 10) were impaired in their abilities to discriminate between the auditory emotions of others following stimulation to rPoG and rPM compared with stimulation at the vertex (cTBS control site). b, This was not found to be the case when participants (n = 10) had to discriminate auditory identity (experiment 2)—the effects of cTBS targeted at rPoG, rPM and the vertex did not significantly differ between the sites stimulated, and there was a trend for facilitation at all sites. Between-group comparisons also revealed that the disruption in performance on the emotion-discrimination task following cTBS to rPoG and rPM was significantly different to the facilitation shown in the identity task. No significant difference between emotion discrimination and identity discrimination task performance was found following cTBS at the vertex. *p < 0.05.