N170 changes reflect competition between faces and identifiable characters during early visual processing

The N170 component is sensitive to face-like stimuli: a study of Chinese Peking opera makeup

“…Our findings also showed that the N170 amplitudes were larger over the right than the left hemisphere in response to human-like makeup stimuli, animal-like makeup stimuli, and scrambled control images except for the grey control image. Many studies showed that higher N170 amplitudes over the right hemisphere were observed in response to real faces (Bentin et al 1996;Fan et al 2015;Dundas et al 2015;Kovács et al 2013;Luo et al 2010;Rossion et al 2003;Sagiv and Bentin 2001). Consistent with previous studies (Sagiv and Bentin 2001;Krombholz et al 2007), we found that face-like stimuli can induce greater N170 amplitudes in the right hemisphere compared to the left.…”

Neural Correlates of Visual Perceptual Expertise: Evidence From Cognitive Neuroscience Using Functional Neuroimaging

“…In recent years, this effect has been replicated with both car (Gauthier & Curby, 2005;Scott, Tanaka, Sheinberg, & Curran, 2008) and bird stimuli (Scott, Tanaka, Sheinberg, & Curran, 2006;Tanaka et al, 2005). Research also disclosed the expertise effect on N170 using artificial stimuli including Blobs (Curran, Tanaka, & Weiskopf, 2002) and Greebles (Rossion, Gauthier, Goffaux, Tarr, & Crommelinck, 2002;Rossion, Kung, & Tarr, 2004) and with non-object letter symbols, including Japanese and Chinese characters (Fan et al, 2015;Qi et al, 2016). In summary, EEG studies suggest that, similar to face perception (Hinojosa et al, 2015;Richler & Gauthier, 2014;Towler et al, 2017), visual expertise modifies the temporal aspects of information processing related with an enhanced N170 component for trained or domain-specific objects.…”

“…First, photographs of faces (or of parts of faces) are extensively used as stimuli in visual perceptual expertise research because we have so much exposure to faces that this makes us all experts in face recognition (Bentin, Allison, Puce, Perez, & McCarthy, 1996;Richler & Gauthier, 2014). Second, photographs of non-face objects includes cars (Gauthier, Skudlarski, Gore, & Anderson, 2000), different animal species such as birds (Tanaka, Curran, & Sheinberg, 2005) or dogs (Tanaka & Curran, 2005), and also letters such as Japanese (Maurer, Zevin, & McCandliss, 2008) and Chinese characters (Fan, Chen, Zhang, Qi, Jin, Wang, et al, 2015;Qi, Wang, Hao, Zhu, He, & Luo, 2016). Researchers also use representations of chess positions (Bilalic, Langner, Ulrich, & Grodd, 2011) and medical images (Haller & Radue, 2005).…”

N170 Changes Show Identifiable Chinese Characters Compete Primarily with Faces Rather than Houses

“…Therefore, written language processes invade and reuse cortical areas with pre-existing functions during education ( Dehaene, 2005 , 2009 ; Dehaene and Cohen, 2007 ). Based on this viewpoint, recent studies have provided neuroimaging and electrophysiological evidences showing that as the processing facility of written languages increases, written language processing recruits face-related processes, resulting in a competition between the two events ( Dehaene et al, 2010 ; Li et al, 2013 ; Fan et al, 2015 ).…”

“…N170 is a negative-going ERP component with a waveform peaking at around 170 ms after stimulus onset ( Bötzel et al, 1995 ; Itier and Taylor, 2004 ; Caharel et al, 2005 ; Luo et al, 2010 ; Li et al, 2013 ). Additionally, several studies have found that relevant N170 effects can be induced by written language with different processing facilities ( Maurer et al, 2006 ; Maurer et al, 2008 ; Zhang et al, 2011 ; Fan et al, 2015 ) and faces ( Bentin et al, 1996 ; Eimer, 2000a ; Liu et al, 2000 ; Rossion et al, 2000 ; Fan et al, 2015 ). This reflects the similar temporal properties of these two kinds of effects.…”