Differential early processing for faces and characters: N170 inversion and mirror effects

In the current study we compared the inversion and mirror effects on the N170 component, an event-related potential related to the neural processing of faces, in Chinese characters and faces. Faces displayed an obvious inversion effect on N170 latency and amplitude, whereas characters only showed a slight inversion effect on N170 latency. Moreover, both faces and characters were tolerant to mirror reversal for the N170 component despite a robust behavioral mirror cost for characters. These data indicate dissociation between processing faces and characters during the early perceptual stage.