Mental rotation: an event-related potential study with a validated mental rotation task

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects performed a validated mental rotation task, taken from the cognitive psychology literature. These ERPs show a late posterior negativity relative to a baseline condition requiring all of the same perceptual and cognitive processes except for the mental rotation itself. Our tentative identification of this posterior negativity with mental rotation is further supported by the finding that it varies systematically with the amount of mental rotation required on a trial by trial basis in the experimental task. We conclude that this late negativity is an ERP marker of the mental rotation process, and that this process engages primarily posterior brain regions.