Event-related potentials to structural familiar face incongruity processing

Thirty scalp sites were used to investigate the specific topography of the event-related potentials (ERPs) related to face associative priming when ma sked eyes of familiar faces were completed with either the proper features or incongruent ones. The enhanced negativity of N210 and N350, due to struc tural incongruity of faces, have a "category specific" inferotemporal local ization on the scalp. Additional analyses support the existence of multiple Flip features within the temporal interval typically associated with N400 (N350 and N380), involving occipitotemporal and centroparietal areas. Seven reliable dipole locations have been evidenced using the brain electrical s ource analysis algorithm. Some of these localizations (fusiform, parahippoc ampal) are already known to be involved in face recognition, the other ones being related to general cognitive processes related to the task's demand. Because of their specific topography, the observed effects suggest that th e face structural congruency process might involve early specialized neocor tical areas in parallel with cortical memory circuits in the integration of perceptual and cognitive face processing.