Lexis, semantics, attention and MMN: Are there any news since the Cambridge meeting?

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Event Abstract Back to Event Lexis, semantics, attention and MMN: Are there any news since the Cambridge meeting? Y. Shtyrov1* 1 MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, United Kingdom Since the seminal vowel study by Näätänen et al (1997), the field has seen a steady increase in attempts to apply the benefits of the MMN (attention/task independence, earliness, precise control over stimulus features etc.) to the neuroscience of language. While readily applicable to phonological questions, it is a methodological challenge for studies of higher-order language processing. Initial attempts at using words and pseudowords in MMN designs led to a conclusion that long-term memory traces for words can be activated in oddball paradigms revealing early lexical access processes. This position is further strengthened by spatio-temporal patterns of the word-elicited MMNs that are influenced also by the stimulus semantic properties. More recently, even contextual (phrase-level) semantics was found to be reflected in MMN dynamics. These studies, done in various languages, used EEG, MEG and now fMRI to document lexico-semantic access in non-attend settings. The latter, along with the MMN’s known pre-attentive nature, led to suggestions of automaticity in early language access. This, however, is difficult to verify, due to the passive nature of typical distraction paradigms. We have therefore run additional studies, using EEG and MEG and different languages, in which the subjects’ attention on the linguistic input was modulated systematically. These showed that the first stages of linguistic access (up to ~150ms) may indeed be automatic, as they exhibited no attention dependence. Conversely, the later stages of the MMN response are susceptible to attentional influence, possibly reflecting secondary attention- and task-dependant processing of information. In parallel, we have tried to address another drawback of the conventional design – inherently small and therefore unecological number of experimental stimuli, that linguistic MMN approach is frequently criticised for. Keeping even a small stimulus group under precise acoustic control is a challenge, which we have tried to address by using the novel multi-feature design (Näätänen et al, 2004). Remarkably, these studies showed similar results to the earlier conventional designs and replicated lexical MMN enhancement and other linguistic properties of MMN. Still, signal-to-noise ratio in multi-feature design did not seem as high as in the traditional oddball, suggesting to apply it with caution in the language domain. The linguistic MMN appears now as a robust index of early phonological, lexical, semantic (and syntactic) access occurring in the brain in a largely automatic and parallel fashion. It may also have a potential in showing how these processes are disturbed in populations other than young healthy undergraduates. Conference: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Symposium 5: Language and language deficits Citation: Shtyrov Y (2009). Lexis, semantics, attention and MMN: Are there any news since the Cambridge meeting?. Conference Abstract: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.024 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Mar 2009; Published Online: 19 Mar 2009. * Correspondence: Y. Shtyrov, MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom, yury.shtyrov@cfin.au.dk Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Y. Shtyrov Google Y. Shtyrov Google Scholar Y. Shtyrov PubMed Y. Shtyrov Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.