Dinamiche neurali del linguaggio: ERP e ritmi oscillatori nei processi di percezione e produzione linguistica

Event-related potential (ERP) approaches to social cognitive and affective neuroscience (SCAN) are not as widely used as other neuroimaging techniques, yet they offer several unique advantages. In particular, the high temporal resolution of ERP measures of neural activity make them ideally suited for studying the dynamic interplay of rapidly unfolding cognitive and affective processes. In this article, we highlight the utility of ERP methods for scientists investigating questions of SCAN. We begin with a brief description of the physiological basis of ERPs and discussion of methodological practices. We then discuss how ERPs may be used to address a range of questions concerning social perception, social cognition, attitudes, affect and self-regulation, with examples of research that has used the ERP approach to contribute important theoretical advances in these areas. Whether used alone or in combination with other techniques, the ERP is an indispensable part of the social and affective neuroscientist's methodological toolkit.

OntoTag - A Linguistic and Ontological Annotation Model Suitable for the Semantic Web

The event-related potential (ERP) approach has provided a wealth of fine-grained information about the time course and the neural basis of cognitive processing events. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, an increasing number of researchers began to realize that an ERP only represents a certain part of the event-related electroencephalographic (EEG) signal. This chapter focuses on another aspect of event-related EEG activity: oscillatory EEG activity. There exists a meaningful relationship between oscillatory neuronal dynamics, on the one hand, and a wide range of cognitive processes, on the other hand. Given that the analysis of oscillatory dynamics extracts information from the EEG/magnetoencephalographic (EEG/MEG) signal that is largely lost with the traditional time-locked averaging of single trials used in the ERP approach, studying the dynamic oscillatory patterns in the EEG/MEG is at least a useful addition to the traditional ERP approach.

The present study addressed the question of whether count and mass nouns are differentially processed in the brain. In two different ERP (Event-Related Potentials) tasks we explored the semantic and syntactic levels of such distinction. Mass and count nouns typically differ in concreteness, hence the effect of this important variable was factorially examined in each task. Thus the stimuli presented were: count concrete, count abstract, mass concrete or mass abstract. The first experiment (concrete/abstract semantic judgment task) involved the interaction between the N400 concreteness effect and the Mass/Count condition, revealing a substantial effect between mass and count nouns at the semantic level. The second experiment (sentence syntactic violation task) showed a Mass/Count distinction on left anterior negativity (LAN) and on P600 components, confirming the difference at the syntactic level. This study suggests that the brain differentiates between count and mass nouns not only at the syntactic level but also at the semantic level. Implications for our understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying the Mass/Count distinction are discussed.

Characterizing the morphosyntactic processing deficit and its relationship to phonology in developmental dyslexia

Event related potentials to native speech contrasts predicts word reading abilities in early school-aged children

We investigated Korean language processing based on event-related potentials (ERPs) under congruent and incongruent conditions with semantic, syntactic, and combined errors. Fifteen participants were presented with visual stimuli consisting of 180 sentences ending in expected words (the congruent condition), 60 under the semantic condition, 60 under the syntactic condition, and 60 under the combined condition. The semantically incongruent condition was shown to elicit an N400 response, distributed in the right frontocentral region, as in semantic studies administered with Indo-European (IE) languages. The syntactically incongruent condition elicited P600 followed by N400 components but no early left-anterior negativity (ELAN) was detected, reflecting structural differences in Korean and IE languages. The doubly incongruent combined condition evoked N400 and P600 components with faster latency and higher amplitude compared to the syntactic conditions. The differences suggest that syntactic integration is influenced by semantic processing, but also that the semantic structure is independent of the syntactic context in the absence of semantic anomalies. Introduction Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) have been widely used to investigate the neurophysiological mechanisms of human language. ERP studies of language processes have indicated three main language-associated ERP components: the N400, early left-anterior negativity (ELAN) /left-anterior negativity (LAN), and P600 components (Hagoort et al., 1993; Kutas & Hillyard, 1980; Osterhout, 1994). Kutas and Hillyard (1980) presented visual sentence stimuli with unexpected or incongruent endings and found a negative peak around 400 ms, observing that N400 is an “electrophysiological marker of the ‘reprocessing’ of semantically incongruent information.

Background: Event-related potentials (ERPs) are currently utilized to study information processing under the influence of neuropsychiatric disorders and are candidate endophenotypes of schizophrenia. However, the traditional ERP approach discards most oscillatory information in the EEG through grand averaging process. This study tried to focus on ERP component of mismatch negativity (MMN) between control and schizophrenia groups in Taiwan. In addition to traditional (grand average) ERP approach, we also compared the time-frequency analysis results of the mismatch negativity.Methods: MMN values were recorded in 55 schizophrenia patients and 42 controls using an auditory oddball paradigm for the duration of the MMN. Besides the traditional grand average approach, the continuous data files were also used for time-frequency analysis via ERP wavelab. Six parameters were explored: event-related spectral perturbation, WTav, avWT, induced activity, intertrial phase coherence and intertrial linear coherence.Results: Traditional ERP approach discovered that group difference occurred in MMN mean amplitude which was compatible with the previous literature. In time-frequency analysis, schizophrenia subjects have lower intertrial phase coherence than controls.Conclusion: Deficit in preattentive sensory information processing, such as MMN, is prominent in Taiwanese schizophrenia subjects. It may also play a role in the basic integrated neural network activity, which could be further explored by time-frequency approach.

Stimulation of Category-Selective Brain Areas Modulates ERP to Their Preferred Categories

The research aimed to describe the forms of linguistic creativity of BIPA students at the morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels. The research method used was descriptive qualitative with content analysis techniques. The research data were 78 sentences written by BIPA students at Bina Nusantara University academic year 2020/2021. The results show that BIPA students’ sentences have linguistic creativity in the form of the morphological, syntactic, and semantic levels sentences. At the morphological level, the process of linguistic creativity in words is carried out by (1) inserting foreign terms into sentences, (2) using non-standard words, and (3) abbreviating words. While in phrases, linguistic creativity is done by (1) reversing the structure of the phrase, (2) forming nominal phrases with less common word pairs, and (3) forming nominal phrases by incorporating elements of student culture. At the syntactic level, linguistic creativity is carried out in the form of compiling compound sentences with the expansion of descriptions, expansion of objects, expansion of subjects, and expansion of predicates. At the semantic level, linguistic creativity is manifested in the form of the figure of speech: personification, simile, hyperbole, repetition, and metaphor.

ABSTRACT: China has had a long history of contact with speakers of English, beginning in the seventeenth century. Since 1974, English has become the most widely studied language in China. With language contact comes linguistic interinfluence. Two manifestations of English–Chinese interinfluence are the Englishization of Chinese and the nativization of English, which can both be perceived at the phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic levels. It is important to note that the Englishization of Chinese seems most evident at the phonological and semantic levels, and that it also occurs, to an extent, at the syntactic level. In addition, the nativization of English appears to be most evident at the phonological level; however, the various accents and dialects of Chinese make this a difficult generalization to support. Therefore, this article will discuss primarily the nativization of English and the Englishization of Chinese with regard to the morphological, semantic and syntactic levels.

In morphologically richer languages, including French, one must learn the specific properties of number agreement in order to understand the language, and this learning process continues into adolescence. This study examined similarities and differences between French-speaking adolescents with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) when processing number agreement, and investigated how morpho-syntactic regularity affected language processing. Using event-related potentials (ERP) and only grammatical sentences with audio-visual mismatches, we studied ERP correlates to three types of number agreement: (1) regular determiner agreement in noun phrases, (2) regular subject-verb plural liaison, and (3) irregular subject-verb agreement. We also included a lexico-semantic mismatch condition to investigate lexico-semantic processing in our participants. 17 adolescents with DLD (M = 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with typical language (TL, M = 12.2 years) participated in the study. Our results suggest three patterns. First, French-speaking teenagers without DLD are still consolidating their neurocognitive processing of morpho-syntactic number agreement and generally display ERP profiles typical of lower language proficiency than adult native speakers. Second, differences in morphosyntactic processing between teenagers with and without DLD seem to be limited to rule-based (regular) number agreement. Third, there is little evidence for corresponding differences in lexico-semantic processing.

ERP correlates of a flanker task with varying levels of analytic-holistic cognitive style

Event-related potential (ERP) studies are very specialized ones that can be used only to investigate specific problems to get a different perspective with respect to more traditional measurements techniques. The peculiarity of ERP measures (time windows, repetitions, etc.) requires a careful design of the experimental protocol to obtain meaningful data. In this paper we discuss how ERPs can be used to study elicitation of emotional perception by means of familiar visual stimuli and, as well, its modification due to the proposition of unexpected stimuli.

Background: Event related potential (ERP) components, such as P3, N2, and FRN, are potential metrics for assessing feedback response as a form of performance monitoring. Most research studies investigate these ERP components using clinical or research-grade electroencephalography (EEG) systems. Wearable EEGs, which are an affordable alternative, have the potential to assess feedback response using ERPs but have not been sufficiently evaluated. Feedback-related ERPs also have not been scientifically evaluated in interactive settings that are similar to daily computer use. In this study, a consumer-grade wearable EEG system was assessed for its feasibility to collect feedback-related ERPs through an interactive software module that provided an environment in which users were permitted to navigate freely within the program to make decisions.Methods: The recording hardware, which costs < $1,500 in total, incorporated the OpenBCI Cyton Board with Daisy chain, a consumer-grade EEG system that costs $949 USD. Seventeen participants interacted with an oddball paradigm and an interactive module designed to elicit feedback-related ERPs. The features of interests for the oddball paradigm were the P3 and N2 components. The features of interests for the interactive module were the P3, N2, and FRN components elicited in response to positive, neutral, and two types of negative feedback. The FRN was calculated by subtracting the positive feedback response from the negative feedback responses.Results: The P3 and N2 components of the oddball paradigm indicated statistically significant differences between infrequent targets and frequent targets which is in line with current literature. The P3 and N2 components elicited in the interactive module indicated statistically significant differences between positive, neutral, and negative feedback responses. There were no significant differences between the FRN types and significant interactions with channel group and FRN type.Conclusion: The OpenBCI Cyton, after some modifications, shows potential for eliciting and assessing P3, N2, and FRN components, which are important indicators for performance monitoring, in an interactive setting.