The Commonality Between the Perceptual Adaptation Mechanisms Involved in Processing Faces and Nonface Objects of Expertise

Objective: The authors designed 2 experiments to examine the commonality of the N170 component involved in processing faces and nonface objects of expertise. Method: In Experiment 1, to investigate the N170 adaptation effect between faces and printed language, 18 bilingual participants (7 males) were recruited, and the N170 response elicited by faces and words was recorded using a 128-channel HydroCel Geodesic Sensor Net. To address whether this asymmetrical between-category N170 adaptation effect generalizes to any object of expertise, in Experiment 2, 19 participants (9 males) were recruited by training to become Greeble experts. The N170 component elicited by faces and Greebles was recorded before and after training. Results: In Experiment 1, the authors found that only faces can affect the N170 response elicited by words but words cannot affect the N170 response elicited by face. In Experiment 2, both before and after training, Greeble adaptors did not affect the N170 response elicited by faces. It is important to note that after training, the faces decreased the N170 response elicited by the Greebles. Conclusions: These results suggest that not only is there some commonality of N170 response elicited by face and nonface objects of expertise but also the kinds of functions associated with the N170 neural selectivity to faces were more than that to nonface expert objects.