The effects of stimulus inversion on the neural representations of Chinese character and face recognition
Journal
Neuropsychologia
Journal Volume
164
Date Issued
2022
Author(s)
Abstract
This study investigates whether stimulus inversion influences neural responses of Chinese character recognition similarly to its effect on face recognition in category-selective and object-related brain areas using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants performed a one-back matching task for simple (one radical) and compound (two radicals) Chinese characters and faces with upright and inverted orientations. Inverted stimuli produced slower response times with stronger activity within the fusiform gyrus (FG) than upright stimuli for faces and Chinese characters. While common inversion-related activation was identified in the left FG among stimulus types, we observed a significant inter-regional correlation between the left FG and the intraparietal sulcus for face inversion. Importantly, analyses of region-of-interest (ROI) multivariate pattern classification showed that classifiers trained on face inversion can decode the representations of character inversion in the character-selective ROI. However, this was not true for face inversion in face-selective ROIs when the classifiers were trained on characters. Similar activity patterns for character and face inversion were observed in the object-related ROIs. We also showed higher decoding accuracy for upright stimuli in the face-selective ROI than in the character-selective ROI but this was not true for inverted ones or when patterns were examined in the object-related ROIs. Together, our results support shared and distinct configural representations for character and face recognition in category-selective and object-related brain areas. ? 2021 Elsevier Ltd
Subjects
Chinese characters
Face inversion effect
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Multivariate pattern classification analysis
Word recognition
accuracy
adult
Article
Chinese script
classification
controlled study
facial recognition
female
functional magnetic resonance imaging
functional neuroimaging
fusiform gyrus
human
human experiment
image analysis
image processing
intraparietal sulcus
male
multivariate analysis
nerve potential
normal human
stimulus
stimulus inversion
task performance
SDGs
Type
journal article