The N170 occipito-temporal component is delayed and enhanced to inverted faces but not to inverted objects: an electrophysiological account of face-specific processes in the human brain
Abstract
Behavioral studies have shown that picture-plane inversion impacts face and object recognition differently, thereby suggesting face-specific processing mechanisms in the human brain. Here we used event-related potentials to investigate the time course of this behavioral inversion effect in both faces and novel objects. ERPs were recorded for 14 subjects presented with upright and inverted visual categories, including human faces and novel objects (Greebles). A N170 was obtained for all categories of stimuli, including Greebles. However, only inverted faces delayed and enhanced N170 (bilaterally). These observations indicate that the N170 is not specific to faces, as has been previously claimed. In addition, the amplitude difference between faces and objects does not reflect face-specific mechanisms since it can be smaller than between non-face object categories. There do exist some early differences in the time-course of categorization for faces and non-faces across inversion. This may be attributed either to stimulus category per se (e.g. face-specific mechanisms) or to differences in the level of expertise between these categories.
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The emergence of perceptual expertise in several visual domains (i.e. bird experts, car experts) has been linked to enhanced perception of category members via an increased ability to integrate information across the entire stimulus.
“The emergence of perceptual expertise in several visual domains (i.e. bird experts, car experts) has been linked to enhanced perception of category members via an increased ability to integrate information across the entire stimulus [31].”
From The visual word form area: expertise for reading in the fusiform gyrus (2003) · cites this paper as [31]
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- Authors
- Rossion, B., Gauthier, I., Tarr, M. J., Despland, P., Bruyer, R., Linotte, S., & Crommelinck, M.
- Affiliations
- UCLouvain (BE)
- Brown University (US)
- Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CH)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Neuroreport
- Published
- 2000-01
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 69-72
- ISSN
- 0959-4965 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2106360999
- Cited by
- 738
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 34 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 33 · 2013: 52 · 2012: 34
- FWCI
- 11.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Neuroreport (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KiltHub Repository (submittedVersion)
- Digital Access to Libraries (Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), l'Université de Namur (UNamur) and the Université Saint-Louis (USL-B)) (submittedVersion)
- IRIS (submittedVersion)
- SERVAL (Université de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Face recognition and analysis
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- N170, face inversion effect, face recognition (cognition), object recognition, novel objects, Greebles, face-specific processing, event-related potentials, visual categorization, face expertise, occipitotemporal cortex
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Electrooculography, Electrophysiology, Evoked Potentials, Face, Female, Form Perception, Humans, Male, Occipital Lobe, Psychomotor Performance, Temporal Lobe
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