Event-related Brain Potential Study Research Articles

A revisit to interactions of stimulus quality and semantic context on N400 in visual word recognition.

Much behavioral research has revealed interactive effects between stimulus quality and semantic priming in visual word recognition, practically in favor of the interactive activation model. However, the limited number of event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have yielded inconsistent results considering this interaction's impact on N400 amplitude. The current ERP study aimed to examine whether the joint effects of stimulus quality and semantic priming were specific to the lexical decision task. We used both behavioral measures and ERP recordings to evaluate the joint effects of stimulus degradation (i.e. highly vs. slightly degraded) and semantic priming (i.e. semantically related vs. unrelated) in a lexical decision task involving visual recognition of Chinese characters. The results showed significant degradation-by-priming interactions on response times and N400 amplitude ( P < 0.05), with larger semantic priming effects on slightly degraded targets. These converging behavioral and electrophysiological findings provide evidence in accordance with the interactive activation models of visual word recognition, in which the early-stage visual processing (i.e. degradation) cascades into the later-stage semantic processing (i.e. priming), thus yielding interactions observed in N400 amplitude.

N400 or P600?—A Systematic Review of ERP Studies on Gender Stereotype Violations

ABSTRACTPsycholinguistic studies using the event‐related brain potential (ERP) technique have found both N400 and P600 effects for gender stereotype violations. The finding of a P600 effect for this type of world knowledge violation is surprizing given that this component is traditionally associated with syntactic violations. In this paper, we set out to systematically analyse design‐ and task patterns of ERP studies investigating gender stereotype violations. Based on our review, we propose a scheme that predicts a P600 effect for gender stereotype violations for stimuli comprising entire sentences, and specifically when the gender stereotype serves to establish coherence in inferences (i.e., expecting a specific referent gender or a stereotype‐appropriate behaviour of the sentence subject based on the gender stereotype information). We predict an N400 effect for gender stereotype information that does not serve to establish coherence in inferences, as well as in priming paradigms. By extension, our predictive scheme suggests that the N400 may reflect a hybrid process of semantic retrieval and integration, while the P600 may reflect a cognitive process of error monitoring, and mental revision. Our study can aid in the interpretation of previous findings and inform future studies investigating gender stereotyping.

Unravelling the origin of the reward positivity: a human intracranial event-related brain potential study.

The reward positivity (RewP) is an event-related brain potential (ERP) component that emerges approximately 250 to 350 milliseconds (ms) after receiving reward-related feedback stimuli and is believed to be important for reinforcement learning and reward processing. Although numerous localization studies have indicated that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is the neural generator of this component, other studies have identified sources outside of the ACC, fuelling a debate about its origin. Because the results of EEG and MEG source localization studies are severely limited by the inverse problem, we addressed this question by leveraging the high spatial and temporal resolution of intracranial EEG. We predicted that we would identify a neural generator of the RewP in the caudal ACC. We recorded intracranial EEG in 19 refractory epilepsy patients who underwent invasive video-EEG monitoring at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium. Participants engaged in the virtual T-maze task (vTMT), a trial-and-error task known to elicit a canonical RewP, while scalp and intracranial EEG were simultaneously recorded. The RewP was identified using a difference wave approach for both scalp and intracranial EEG. The data were aggregated across participants to create a virtual "meta-participant" that contained all the recorded intracranial ERPs (iERPs) with respect to their intracranial contact locations. We used both a hypothesis-driven (focused on ACC) and exploratory (whole-brain analysis) approach to segment the brain into regions of interest (ROI). For each ROI, we evaluated the degree to which the time course of the absolute current density (ACD) activity mirrored the time course of the RewP, and confirmed the statistical significance of the results using permutation analysis. The grand average waveform of the scalp data revealed a RewP at 309 ms after reward feedback with a frontocentral scalp distribution, consistent with the identification of this component as the RewP. The meta-participant contained iERPs recorded from 582 intracranial contacts in total. The ACD activity of the aggregated iERPs were most similar to the RewP in left caudal ACC, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left frontomedial cortex, and left white matter, with the highest score attributed to caudal ACC, as predicted. To our knowledge, this is the first study that uses intracranial EEG aggregated across multiple human epilepsy patients and current source density analysis to identify the neural generator(s) of the RewP. These results provide direct evidence that the ACC is a neural generator of the RewP.

An ERP Study on the Processing of Subject-Verb and Object-Verb Gender Agreement in Punjabi.

This study was conducted with the aim of exploring the general parsing mechanisms involved in processing different kinds of dependency relations, namely verb agreement with subjects versus objects in Punjabi, an SOV Indo-Aryan language. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as twenty-five native Punjabi speakers read transitive sentences. Critical stimuli were either fully acceptable as regards verb agreement, or alternatively violated gender agreement with the subject or object. A linear mixed-models analysis confirmed a P600 effect at the position of the verb for all violations, regardless of whether subject or object agreement was violated. These results thus suggest that an identical mechanism is involved in gender agreement computation in Punjabi regardless of whether the agreement is with the subject or the object argument.

A premium for positive social interest and attractive voices in the acceptability of unfair offers? An ERP study.

Although the attractiveness of voices plays an important role in social interactions, it is unclear how voice attractiveness and social interest influence social decision-making. Here, we combined the ultimatum game with recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and examined the effect of attractive versus unattractive voices of the proposers, expressing positive versus negative social interest ("I like you" vs. "I don't like you"), on the acceptance of the proposal. Overall, fair offers were accepted at significantly higher rates than unfair offers, and high voice attractiveness increased acceptance rates for all proposals. In ERPs in response to the voices, their attractiveness and expressed social interests yielded early additive effects in the N1 component, followed by interactions in the subsequent P2, P3 and N400 components. More importantly, unfair offers elicited a larger Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN) than fair offers but only when the proposer's voice was unattractive or when the voice carried positive social interest. These results suggest that both voice attractiveness and social interest moderate social decision-making and there is a similar "beauty premium" for voices as for faces.

Unpleasant emotion inhibits attentional focus toward a peripheral target in a visual search: an ERP study.

Previous studies have found that emotional states affect the extent of attention, and the effect has been explained by adaptive views. If the adaptive explanations are true, emotion should modulate attentional focus toward a peripheral stimulus. The present study investigated if emotion affects the focus of attention toward a peripheral target in a visual search paradigm with event-related brain potential (ERP) measurement. In each trial of the experiment, participants performed a visual search task after an emotion (unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant) was induced by presenting an international affective picture system (IAPS) image. We measured N2pc, which is an ERP index reflecting attentional focus toward a peripheral target in a visual search, and compared the amplitudes among the emotion conditions. According to the adaptive view of emotional effects on cognition, this study hypothesized that unpleasant emotion would enhance the focus of attention, and pleasant emotion would inhibit it. These hypotheses predicted that N2pc amplitude would increase with unpleasant emotion and decrease with pleasant emotion. However, this study obtained inconsistent results; N2pc amplitude decreased in the unpleasant condition, and there was no significant effect of pleasant emotion on the ERP. The results suggest that unpleasant emotion inhibited the attentional focusing process. This is the first report to examine how emotion modulates the focus of attention toward a peripheral target in a visual search by using ERP. The findings contribute to understanding the relationship between emotion and cognition.

The Processing of Phi-features in Sentences with Third-person Pronoun: An ERP Study in Turkish

The relationship between Person and Number features is often addressed in both theoretical and experimental studies. It is noteworthy that the discussion on how these features are processed has evolved over time towards how Person and Number features are structured in constructions with different persons (first person, second person, third person). While some studies state that Person and Number features can only be tested with third-person sentences (Manchini et al., 2011; Mancini et al., 2014), other studies state that these features can be tested with all person pronouns except R-expressions (regular noun phrases) (Ackema &amp; Neeleman, 2019). In the literature, it is noteworthy that the relationship between the processing of Person and Number features has been tested with first- and second-person pronouns and R-expressions, but there is no study testing the issue with third-person pronouns. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in the processing of Person and Number features in sentences with third-person pronouns in Turkish using Event-related Brain Potentials (ERPs). In this study, three conditions, namely Grammatical, Person Mismatch and Number Mismatch, were presented visually in words to 33 participants. In the study, a widespread N400 component was observed in both the processing of the Person feature and the processing of the Number feature. It was found that there was no difference between the two features in the corresponding time window. However, in the next time window, a late N400 component was observed in the processing of the Number feature, while a positivity (P600) was observed in the processing of the Person feature. In this time window, there is a difference in the processing of the Person and Number features. In conclusion, this study found that there is a difference in the processing of the Person and Number features in sentences with third-person pronouns in Turkish. It is suggested that the P600 finding in the processing of the Person feature reflects the difficulty in processing this feature. It is suggested that the late N400 finding in the processing of the Number feature may be due to the load it imposes on the processing process due to the fact that the morphological appearance of the Number feature in verb conjugation is parallel to nominal pluralisation, and the greater demand on working memory as the resolution of the Number mismatch involves more alternatives than the Person mismatch.

Tonal and syllabic encoding in overt Cantonese Chinese speech production: An ERP study.

This study was conducted to investigate how syllables and lexical tones are processed in Cantonese speech production using the picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore an accompanying auditory word distractor. The target and distractor either shared the same word-initial syllable with the same tone (Tonal-Syllable related), the same word-initial syllable without the same tone (Atonal-Syllable related), the same tone only (Tone alone related), or were phonologically unrelated. Participants' naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the target and distractor shared the same tonal- or atonal-syllable but null effect was found in the Tone alone related condition. The mean ERP amplitudes (per each 100-ms time window) were subjected to stimulus-locked (i.e., time-locked to stimulus onset) and response-locked (i.e., time-locked to response onset) analyses. Significant differences between related and unrelated ERP waves were similarly observed in both Tonal-Syllable related and Atonal-Syllable related conditions in the time window of 400-500 ms post-stimulus. However, distinct ERP effects were observed in these two phonological conditions within the 500-ms pre-response period. In addition, null effects were found in the Tone alone related condition in both stimulus-locked and response-locked analyses. These results suggest that in Cantonese spoken word production, the atonal syllable of the target is retrieved first and then associated with the target lexical tone, consistent with the view that tone has an important role to play at a late stage of phonological encoding in tonal language production.

Processing of complex morphosyntactic structures in French: ERP evidence from native speakers

This event-related brain potentials (ERP) study investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the auditory processing of verbal complexity in French illustrated by the prescriptive present subjunctive mode. Using a violation paradigm, ERPs of 32 French native speakers were continuously recorded while they listened to 200 ecological French sentences selected from the INTEFRA oral corpus (2006). Participants performed an offline acceptability judgement task on each sentence, half of which contained a correct present subjunctive verbal agreement (reçoive) and the other half an incorrect present indicative one (peut). Critically, the present subjunctive mode was triggered either by verbs (Ma mère desire que j’apprenneMy mother wants me to learn) or by subordinating conjunctions (Pour qu’elle reçoiveSo that she receives). We found a delayed anterior negativity (AN) due to the length of the verbal forms and a P600 that were larger for incongruent than for congruent verbal agreement in the same time window. While the two effects were left lateralized for subordinating conjunctions, they were right lateralized for both structures with a larger effect for subordinating conjunctions than for verbs. Moreover, our data revealed that the AN/P600 pattern was larger in late position than in early ones. Taken together, these results suggest that morphosyntactic complexity conveyed by the French subjunctive involves at least two neurocognitive processes thought to support an initial morphosyntactic analysis (AN) and a syntactic revision and repair (posterior P600). These two processes may be modulated as a function of both the element (i.e., subordinating conjunction vs verb) that triggers the subjunctive mode and the moment at which this element is used while sentence processing.

Visual Verbal Information Processing under Conditions of Reading and Categorization in Schizotypy: An Event-Related Brain Potential Study

Some individuals exhibit symptoms that resemble schizophrenia, but these manifestations are less in the degree to those seen in schizophrenia. Such a latent personality construct has been called schizotypy. It is known that schizotypal personality traits have an impact on cognitive control and semantic processing. The present study aimed to examine whether visual verbal information processing is modulated by enhancement of top-down processes applied to different words within one phrase in subjects with schizotypal personality traits. The tasks employed were based on differences in the involvement of cognitive control in visual verbal information processing and hypothesized that subjects with schizotypal traits would demonstrate failure in top-down modulation of word processing within a phrase. Forty-eight healthy undergraduate students were enrolled in the study. Participants were screened for schizotypy with the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. Word combinations consisting of an attribute and a noun were used as stimuli. Participants were asked to categorize one word in a phrase and to passively read the other word in the pair. To obtain neurophysiological data during task performance, the event-related brain potential N400 was measured. In the low schizotypy scores group, an increased N400 amplitude was revealed for both attributes and nouns during passive reading compared to categorization. This effect was not observed in the high schizotypy scores group; therefore, word processing was modulated weakly by the experimental task in subjects with schizotypal personality traits. Changes observed in schizotypy can be regarded as a failure in top-down modulation of word processing within a phrase.

Neural empathic response to disability: An ERP study of prejudice

While social neuroscience has already provided evidence for a deficit of affective empathy in racial prejudice, little is known about other less visible social categories when considered as an outgroup. We studied the process of empathy through event-related brain potentials (ERPs). We focused on the group "people with disabilities" as they are the target of a large amount of prejudice. Twenty-six participants performed a pain decision task. The mean amplitudes of N1, P2, N2–N3 and P3 components were recorded. Our results are consistent with previous work on prejudice, showing that the pain detection is modulated by group membership (with disabilities vs. without disabilities) on N2–N3, suggesting a better neural decoding of pain vs. non-pain in the without-disability condition. Critically, no effect of early sensory components (N1, P2) was found, and P3 was not moderated by disability. These findings indicate a different time course of empathic responses depending on the condition, suggesting that people with disabilities trigger specific empathic responses. Our results contribute to disentangling perceptual processes from affective empathy reactions.

The Effect of Difference in Word Order on Semantic Processing in Hindi-English Bilinguals.

The typology of word order in Hindi (Subject-Object-Verb, SOV) differs from that of English (Subject-Verb-Object, SVO). Bilinguals whose two languages have conflicting word order provide a unique opportunity to understand how word order affects language processing. Earlier behavioural and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies with Spanish-Basque bilinguals showed longer reading times and more errors in the comprehension of OSV sentences than SOV sentences in Basque language, indicating that non-canonical word orders (OSV) were difficult to process than canonical word order (SOV). This study was designed to explore how the difference in word order in Hindi and English languages affects N400 parameters in proficient Hindi-English bilinguals, using semantic congruity paradigm. Twenty-five proficient Hindi-English bilingual subjects were asked to silently read the congruent and incongruent sentences presented in one word at a time in both the languages. ERPs were recorded from midline frontal, central and parietal sites. The mean amplitude of the N400 effect at the parietal sites in Hindi-English proficient bilinguals was larger for English than for Hindi but there was no significant difference in the N400 latencies. Hindi-English bilingual subjects processed SOV and SVO sentences with equal ease as evidenced by the N400 latencies. Higher amplitude of the N400 effect with English sentences indicate that placing 'Object' as the final word makes sentences more predictable than verb as the final word. Understanding the word order difference might help to unravel the neurophysiological mechanisms of language comprehension and may offer some insights in terms of functional advantage of a particular word order in bilinguals.

How quickly do we learn new faces in everyday life? Neurophysiological evidence for face identity learning after a brief real-life encounter

Faces learnt in a single experimental session elicit a familiarity effect in event-related brain potentials (ERPs), with more negative amplitudes for newly learnt relative to unfamiliar faces in the N250 component. However, no ERP study has examined face learning following a brief real-life encounter, and it is not clear how long it takes to learn new faces in such ecologically more valid conditions. To investigate these questions, the present study examined whether robust image-independent representations, as reflected in the N250 familiarity effect, could be established after a brief unconstrained social interaction by analysing the ERPs elicited by highly variable images of the newly learnt identity and an unfamiliar person. Significant N250 familiarity effects were observed after a 30-min (Experiment 1) and a 10-min (Experiment 2) encounter, and a trend was observed after 5 min of learning (Experiment 3), demonstrating that 5–10 min of exposure were sufficient for the initial establishment of image-independent representations. Additionally, the magnitude of the effects reported after 10 and 30 min was comparable suggesting that the first 10 min of a social encounter might be crucial, with extra 20 min from the same encounter not adding further benefit for the initial formation of robust face representations.

The effect of acute alcohol intoxication on alcohol cue salience: An event-related brain potential study.

Alcohol cue salience is considered core to the broader understanding of drinking behaviors. In the present research, we sought to build the knowledge of alcohol cue salience by exploring P3 responses to alcohol images among social drinkers within a large-scale alcohol-administration study. Participants (N = 246) were randomly assigned to receive either a moderate dose of alcohol (target BAC = .08%) or a nonalcoholic control beverage. Following beverage administration, participants engaged in image-viewing tasks while EEG was recorded. We examined the impact of alcohol on the amplitude of P3 responses to pictures of alcoholic versus nonalcoholic beverages, exploring both beverage-manipulation and individual-difference moderators of these effects. Results revealed a significant effect of acute alcohol intoxication on P3 responses across stimulus types, with the overall amplitude of P3 being significantly smaller among participants consuming alcohol versus a nonalcoholic beverage. In addition, results revealed a significant main effect of image type, such that P3 amplitude was larger for alcohol images compared to nonalcohol images. No interactions emerged between stimulus type and beverage condition or stimulus type and AUD risk level. With the aim of better understanding the potential influence of the broader context on responses to individual cues, the present study examined the perceived salience of alcohol cues within a drinking setting. Findings provide evidence for alcohol cue salience that is both robust and also widespread across drinkers. More generally, the present study's findings may offer new directions for understanding neurocognitive processes of alcohol cue salience across contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Subliminal Priming Effects of Masked Social Hierarchies During a Categorization Task: An Event-Related Brain Potentials Study.

Evidence so far shows that status detection increases attentional resources, especially for high hierarchies. However, little is known about the effects of masked social status cues on cognition. Here, we explore the masked priming effects of social status cues during a categorization task. For this purpose, we use Event-Related brain Potentials (ERP) time-locked to the presentation of two types of artworks (Christian, non-Christian) primed by masked social hierarchies sorted into two types (religious, military), and in two ranks (high, low) each. ERP results indicate early attention effects at N1, showing larger amplitudes for the processing of artworks after high and military ranks. Thereafter, the P3a increased for all artworks primed by religious vs. military figures, indicating a relevant role of task demands at this processing stage. Our results remark the automaticity of hierarchy detection and extend previous findings on the effects of social status cues on complex cognitive processes.

Trust violations affect the emotional working memory updating: An event-related brain potential study

Previous studies found that trust violations impaired the ability of working memory (WM) updating, however, these studies did not consider the emotional context in the WM updating. Individuals who experience trust violations have the characteristics of negative bias and enhanced negative emotion. Thus it is necessary to explore how emotional contexts moderate the relationship between trust violations and WM updating. In this study, the trust game was used to manipulate trust violations. Fifty-three participants performed the emotional two-back task while event-related potentials were recorded. Results showed that compared to the control group, the violation group had smaller P2 and P3 amplitudes both in emotional and nonemotional contexts and larger N2 amplitudes in the emotional contexts. There were no significant differences between the two groups on the behavioral data. These results suggest that trust violations result in the inefficient allocation of attention in the early attention (P2) and updating maintenance stages (P3) regardless of the emotional type of the material. Trust violations also improve the abilities of response inhibition, conflict monitoring, or sequential match (N2) when processing emotional material, which may play a compensatory role to maintain a level of behavioral performance comparable to the control group. Together, trust violations affect the sub-processes underlying emotional WM updating differently, and these influences are not valence specific.

Event-related brain potentials study of arithmetic fact retrieval in children with different math achievement levels

ABSTRACT Fact retrieval deficits have been documented in children with mathematical learning disabilities. We assessed the retrieval of arithmetic facts in neurotypical 9-to-10-year-old children with different mathematical achievement levels using event-related potential methods while performing an arithmetic verification task (addition, subtraction, and multiplication). Forty-eight participants were divided into High (H), Average (A), and Low (L) mathematics performance according to their scores on The Wide Range Achievement Test 4 (WRAT4). Children determined whether appearing digits matched or not the correct solution of the preceding problem. L group showed a lower number of correct responses, prolonged reaction times, and poorer performance on working memory (WM) tasks. P300 component showed significantly higher amplitudes for correct solutions in H, while N270 showed higher amplitudes for incorrect solutions. L children showed difficulty in recovering arithmetic facts and poorly modulated N270 and P300 components, probably reflecting WM processing problems affecting the construction and retrieval of numerical information.

The resolution stage, not the incongruity detection stage, is related to the subjective feeling of humor: An ERP study using Japanese nazokake puns

This study examined the relationship between two cognitive stages of humor processing (i.e., detecting incongruity and resolving it) and the subjective feeling of humor, using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Unlike traditional English jokes, Japanese nazokake puns have a structure in which the detection of incongruity and the resolution of it are separated, which enabled this study to observe the ERPs for these two stages independently. In addition, to investigate how the cognitive stages work when people subjectively find a pun funny, the ERPs elicited by funny and unfunny puns, categorized according to participants’ subjective ratings, were compared. This subjective feeling has not received enough attention in previous literature. The results showed that N400 and P600 responses occurred during the incongruity detection stage and the resolution stage, respectively. Furthermore, funny puns enlarged the P600 amplitude compared to unfunny ones, but the N400 amplitude did not significantly differ between the funniness categories. These findings indicate that the resolution stage of humor processing is related to the subjective feeling of humor, rather than the incongruity detection stage.

Evidence from ERP and Eye Movements as Markers of Language Dysfunction in Dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia is a complex reading disorder involving genetic and environmental factors. After more than a century of research, its etiology remains debated. Two hypotheses are often put forward by scholars to account for the causes of dyslexia. The most common one, the linguistic hypothesis, postulates that dyslexia is due to poor phonological awareness. The alternative hypothesis considers that dyslexia is caused by visual-attentional deficits and abnormal eye movement patterns. This article reviews a series of selected event-related brain potential (ERP) and eye movement studies on the reading ability of dyslexic individuals to provide an informed state of knowledge on the etiology of dyslexia. Our purpose is to show that the two abovementioned hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and that dyslexia should rather be considered as a multifactorial deficit.

Effect of Cognitive Control on Age-Related Positivity Effects in Attentional Processing - Evidence From an Event-Related Brain Potential Study.

Studies investigating age-related positivity effects during facial emotion processing have yielded contradictory results. The present study aimed to elucidate the mechanisms of cognitive control during attentional processing of emotional faces among older adults. We used go/no-go detection tasks combined with event-related potentials and source localization to examine the effects of response inhibition on age-related positivity effects. Data were obtained from 23 older and 23 younger healthy participants. Behavioral results showed that the discriminability index (d') of older adults on fear trials was significantly greater than that of younger adults [t(44)=2.37, p=0.024, Cohen’s d=0.70], whereas an opposite pattern was found in happy trials [t(44)=2.56, p=0.014, Cohen’s d=0.75]. The electroencephalography results on the amplitude of the N170 at the left electrode positions showed that the fear-neutral face pairs were larger than the happy-neutral ones for the younger adults [t(22)=2.32, p=0.030, Cohen’s d=0.48]; the older group’s right hemisphere presented similar tendency, although the results were not statistically significant [t(22)=1.97, p=0.061, Cohen’s d=0.41]. Further, the brain activity of the two hemispheres in older adults showed asymmetrical decrement. Our study demonstrated that the age-related “positivity effect” was not observed owing to the depletion of available cognitive resources at the early attentional stage. Moreover, bilateral activation of the two hemispheres may be important signals of normal aging.