Correlations of Electrophysiological Measurements with Identification Levels of Ancient Chinese Characters

Studies of event-related potential (ERP) in the human brain have shown that the N170 component can reliably distinguish among different object categories. However, it is unclear whether this is true for different identifiable levels within a single category. In the present study, we used ERP recording to examine the neural response to different identification levels and orientations (upright vs. inverted) of Chinese characters. The results showed that P1, N170, and P250 were modulated by different identification levels of Chinese characters. Moreover, time frequency analysis showed similar results, indicating that identification levels were associated with object recognition, particularly during processing of a single categorical stimulus.