Behavioral/Cognitive Distinct Regions of Right Temporal Cortex Are Associated with Biological and Human–Agent Motion: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Neuropsychological Evidence

In human lateral temporal cortex, some regions show specific sensitivity to humanmotion. Here we examinewhether such effects reflect a general biological–nonbiological organizational principle or a process specific to human–agent processing by comparing processing of human, animal, and tool motion in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment with healthy participants and a voxel-based lesion-symptommapping (VLSM) study of patients with brain damage (77 stroke patients). The fMRI experiment revealed that in the lateral temporal cortex, the posterior superior temporal sulcus shows apreference for humanand animalmotion,whereas themiddle part of the right superior temporal sulcus/gyrus (mSTS/STG) shows a preference for human and functional tool motion. VLSM analyses also revealed that damage to this rightmSTS/STG region led tomore severe impairment in the recognition of human and functional tool motion relative to animal motion, indicating the causal role of this brain area in human–agent motion processing. The findings for the rightmSTS/STG cannot be reduced to a preference for articulatedmotion or processing of social variables since neither factor is involved in functional tool motion recognition. We conclude that a unidimensional biological–nonbiological distinction cannot fully explain the visual motion effects in lateral temporal cortex. Instead, the results suggest the existence of distinct components in right posterior temporal cortex and mSTS/STG that are associated, respectively, with biological motion and human–agent motion processing