ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R
主办:中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

›› 2010, Vol. 18 ›› Issue (12): 1942-1948.

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A Review of the N170 Component in Face Recognition

LI Ming-Fang;ZHANG Ye;ZHANG Qing-Lin   

  1. (1 Center for Studies of Education and Psychology of Ethnic Minorities in Southwest;
    2 School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China)
  • Received:2010-04-26 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2010-12-15 Published:2010-12-15
  • Contact: ZHANG Qing-Lin

Abstract: The N170 component is a negative brain potential, occurring at 130-200ms time windows, peaking around 160-170ms after stimulus (e.g. faces, object) onset, with a posterior lateral distribution. Recently, studies of N170 focus mainly on three questions: what cognitive mechanism N170 reflects, face structural or feature encoding; whether or not it is face-specific; or whether the component is affected by conscious awareness. In terms of the above questions, future research could investigate the effect of structural and feature encoding on N170 response, compare familiarities of different stimulus on N170, differentiate the N170 from recognition potential, and combine multiple methods to real the cognitive mechanism of N170.

Key words: N170, face recognition, structure encoding, feature encoding, category information processing, attention