EEG coherence during mental rotation of letters, hands and scenes

• EEG coherence of mental rotation of letters is greater than of hands and scenes.
• EEG coherence of rotation angles from 30° to 150° is lower than from 0° and 180°.
• Results support different processes of externally and internally presented objects.
• Results support different processes for 180° rotation compared with lower angles.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate differences in the electrocortical synchronization pattern during mental rotation of three different object categories as well as six different rotation angles. Therefore, event-related coherence of the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity between selective frontal and parietal electrode pairs of ten subjects was measured during the performance of a mental rotation task consisting of rotation of letters, hands and scenes. Statistical analysis showed an increased coherence of frontal and parietal electrode pairs for the condition LETTER in comparison to the other conditions in the alpha1- (8.5–10 Hz) and alpha2-band (10, 5–12 Hz) supporting the notion of different mental rotation mechanisms for externally and internally represented objects. Additionally decreased coherence of the frontal and parietal electrode pairs was found for the rotation angles 30° to 150° in comparison to the 0° and 180° rotations for the alpha1- and alpha2-band as well as the gamma frequency band (30–45 Hz). It is assumed that this decrease of synchronization reflects the mental rotation process implying that the mental rotation process of 180° differs from the rotation process of all other rotation angles.