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Early stages of perceptual face processing are confined to the contralateral hemisphere: evidence from the N170 component

Towler, John and Eimer, Martin (2015) Early stages of perceptual face processing are confined to the contralateral hemisphere: evidence from the N170 component. Cortex 64 , pp. 89-101. ISSN 0010-9452.

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Abstract

High-level visual object processing is often assumed to be largely position-independent. Here we demonstrate that when faces and non-face objects simultaneously appear in opposite visual hemifields, the face-sensitive N170 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) is exclusively generated in the contralateral hemisphere. The effects of face inversion on N170 amplitudes and latencies also show strong contralateral biases. These results reveal that retinotopic biases in low-level visual cortex extend well into category-selective high-level vision. We suggest that the contralateral organisation of face-sensitive visual processing results from generic competitive interactions between hemispheres during the simultaneous perception of visual objects.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Face perception, N170, Retinotopic, Category-selective, Competition, Ventral pathway
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
Depositing User: Administrator
Date Deposited: 05 Nov 2014 12:34
Last Modified: 29 Jul 2025 04:20
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/10909

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