Exploring the Sensorimotor Basis of Emotion Authenticity Discrimination: Data and Code from a ccPAS Study

The goal of this study is to investigate the causal role and directional specificity of cortico-cortical connections between sensorimotor and visual brain regions in discriminating the authenticity of emotional facial expressions. Using a cortico-cortical Paired Associative Stimulation (ccPAS) protocol, we modulated the connectivity between the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and primary motor cortex (M1) to assess their contribution to emotion authenticity discrimination (EAD). We report individual behavioral data collected across four experimental ccPAS conditions targeting forward and backward connectivity (pSTS–IFG, IFG–pSTS, IFG–M1, M1–IFG). Participants completed an EAD task using dynamic facial expressions from the Padova Emotional Dataset of Facial Expressions (PEDFE), followed by authenticity and intensity ratings. We provide R scripts used for preprocessing, statistical analysis, and figure generation. The full stimulus video set is available here: https://osf.io/cynsx/.