Artifact rejection (eye movements, blinks, muscular activations, or movement artifacts) was performed visually on the raw EEG. The recordings were attended by trained technicians, and the simultaneous recording of EOG and EKG further improved the artifact recognition and removal (more details of artifact rejection procedure could be found in refs 30,31). At least 120 seconds of EEG artifact-free recording (not necessarily consecutive) were analyzed for each group, in all conditions. The average time analyzed was 276 ± 18 sec., 280 ± 21 sec. respectively for TAS+ and TAS− subjects. All EEG analysis were performed by means of the exact Low Resolution Electric Tomography software (eLORETA) software, a validated tool for localizing the electric activity in the brain based on multichannel surface EEG recordings32. The eLORETA software benefits from an excellent localization agreement with different multi-modal imaging techniques, also when standard 19-electrodes EEG montage was used14.
