Abstract
Language-related event-related potential (ERP) components such as the N400 have traditionally been associated with linguistic or cognitive functional interpretations. By contrast, it has been considerably more difficult to relate these components to neurobiologically grounded accounts of language. Here, we propose a theoretical framework based on a predictive coding architecture, within which negative language-related ERP components such as the N400 can be accounted for in a neurobiologically plausible manner. Specifically, we posit that the amplitude of negative language-related ERP components reflects precision-weighted prediction error signals, i.e., prediction errors weighted by the relevance of the information source leading to the error. From this perspective, precision has a direct link to cue validity in a particular language and, thereby, to relevance of individual linguistic features for internal model updating. We view components such as the N400 and LAN as members of a family with similar functional characteristics and suggest that latency and topography differences between these components reflect the locus of prediction errors and model updating within a hierarchically organized cortical predictive coding architecture. This account has the potential to unify findings from the full range of the N400 literature, including word-level, sentence-, and discourse-level results as well as cross-linguistic differences.
Highlights
LINKING EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS TO THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE VIA PREDICTIVE CODINGEvent-related potentials (ERPs) have been central to theory-building in psycholinguistics and the cognitive neuroscience of language over the past decades
We further suggest that this general framework applies to other language-related negativities and that it contrasts with the functional role—and neurobiology—of language-related positivities
We propose a functional link between the N400 and the mismatch negativity (MMN), based on two characteristics of the N400 that mirror properties of the MMN: (a) N400 amplitude reflects the degree to which an encountered stimulus diverges from an expected stimulus (Federmeier and Kutas, 1999), a property that has more recently been linked to the degree of surprisal associated with a word (Frank et al, 2015); and (b) N400 amplitude decreases proportionately to the degree of association between a word and the context in which it is encountered (Kutas and Hillyard, 1984)
Summary
LINKING EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS TO THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE VIA PREDICTIVE CODING. Language-related ERPs, are often endowed with functional interpretations that are strongly linguistic or cognitive in nature, considerably limiting the scope of conclusions that can be drawn about neural mechanisms. While functional interpretations of this type are suited to informing linguistic or cognitive theories, the gap to neural mechanisms and, the neurobiology of language is readily apparent. In addition to providing a possible unified theory of neural information processing across a wide range of different domains (for review, see Friston, 2010), predictive coding has been linked intimately to neurobiology via assumptions about cortical organization down to the level of cortical microcircuits (Bastos et al, 2012)
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