In light of these findings, one could argue that the observation of an object we are used to manipulating modulates the corticospinal excitability of parts of the primary motor cortex that control muscles implicated in this action. Here we recorded EMG activity from the FDI muscle, which is at least partially involved in grasping objects of the size and shape of a mobile phone. The interesting finding we observed in this respect is that corticospinal excitability was modulated by the ownership of the seen object, in that it was larger following the presentation of an owned,

as compared with a non-owned mobile phone. While this result may suggest a specific functional organization of the motor cortex for our objects, this conclusion is partially at odd with studies that selleck chemicals analysed the difference of motor excitability during the observation of graspable vs. non-graspable objects (e.g. Buccino et al., 2005), or the time course of changes in motor excitability before the execution of grasping movements, as compared Protein Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor with the mere observation of an object (Prabhu et al., 2007). Overall, activation due to graspability processes emerges within a short time-window after the presentation of a graspable object. Buccino

et al. (2005), for example, found a difference between graspable and non-graspable objects 200 ms after object presentation. Prabhu et al. (2007) reported that corticospinal excitability

was augmented only when it was measured about 100 ms before the actual grasping execution, whereas no changes were manifest during passive observation of a graspable object (i.e. outside the mental set of performing an action). In light of these reports, and the absence of any change in corticospinal excitability observed here when stimulating the left hemisphere, we can dismiss the hypothesis that the increase in excitability of the right hemisphere observed when subjects were displayed either Self or Other mobile phones could be ascribed to general effects of graspability. Finally, it appeared that corporeal (hand) and non-corporeal stimuli (phone) contributed to the increase in corticospinal excitability observed at later time intervals (600 and 900 ms), provided http://www.selleck.co.jp/products/Decitabine.html that they belonged to the observer (Self condition). Besides extending our knowledge of self-processes to hand and hand-associated objects, the present findings also provide insight about the time course of these processes, by showing that consistent MEP increase can be observed at relatively late timings. Previous studies focusing on hand stimuli did not explore the time course of self-hand processing (Patuzzo et al., 2003; Funase et al., 2007). In contrast, the temporal profile of self-related processing has been investigated in studies using face stimuli. Théoret et al.