Introduction to the N170 Response to Words

Accessibility:  Intermediate-Advanced

This month is N170 month. I'm going to be going through a bunch of papers by Urs Maurer on the N170 ERP component and how it relates to word processing. EEG is not my specialty, so hopefully I won't mess anything up.



For this post, we'll start with the basics. The N170 is an ERP component measured in EEG experiments. The N means that it is a negative potential, and the 170 means that it peaks roughly at around 170 ms, although the timing can vary. The N170 tends to be elicited by certain categories of visual images (like faces), and is enhanced for categories for which the subject has some expertise (for example, enhanced N170 response for bird experts when viewing birds).

This last characteristic makes the N170 helpful for studying word processing. Urs Maurer and colleagues tested adults by showing them words, pseudowords, and symbol strings*. The adults showed a greater N170 to words than symbol strings, which would be consistent with an expertise for words acquired over years of reading. The N170 was also more left lateralized for words than to symbol strings, which is not surprising given the general left lateralization of language. Also, the N170 seems to be stronger over the inferior occipital temporal channels, close to the visual word form area.

So those are the basics for the N170 in normal reading adults. It's a useful tool for studying word processing in populations like children and people with dyslexia, so that is where we will continue.

*the task was to detect repetitions


Maurer U, Brandeis D, & McCandliss BD (2005). Fast, visual specialization for reading in English revealed by the topography of the N170 ERP response. Behavioral and brain functions : BBF, 1 PMID: 16091138