Event-related Brain Potentials Patterns Research Articles

Sense combinations influence the neural mechanism of L2 comprehension in semantically violated sentences: Insights from emotioncy

The influence of senses and their combinations has already proven invaluable to language comprehension studies; however, it is not clear to what extent they may add to the functional characteristics of the biphasic, language-related electrophysiological markers. Therefore, to integrate information from different sensory modalities and investigate how sense combinations modulate the N400 and LPC during L2 sentence processing, we used the emotioncy model. Based on the model, we instructed a number of unknown English words to 30 participants using a combination of three (exvolvement) and five senses (involvement). Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and a visual acceptability judgment task (with 216 English sentences under non-violated and semantically violated conditions), the participants' behavioral and neural responses to the words were examined. The results revealed that, taking the retrieval-integration (RI) account, different sense combinations modulated the LPC responses to semantically violated sentences, yet left the N400 unchanged. Thus, to boost comprehension and reduce the cognitive load during the integration and reinterpretation process, multisensory properties of the input need to be enriched. • Semantically violated L2 sentences form a biphasic ERP pattern. • Sense combinations modulated the LPC responses to semantically violated sentences. • Sense combinations left the N400 unchanged. • Rich multisensory information reduces cognitive load during the integration process.

Case Syncretism, Animacy, and Word Order in Continental West Germanic: Neurolinguistic Evidence from a Comparative Study on Standard German, Zurich German, and Fering (North Frisian)

To understand a sentence, it is crucial to understand who is doing what. The interplay of morphological case marking, argument serialization, and animacy provides linguistic cues for the processing system to rapidly identify the thematic roles of the arguments. The present event-related brain potential (ERP) study investigates on-line brain responses during argument identification in Zurich German, a High Alemannic dialect, and in Fering, a North Frisian variety, which both exhibit reduced case systems as compared to Standard German. Like Standard German, Zurich German and Fering are Continental West Germanic varieties, and indeed argument processing in sentences with an object-before-subject order engenders a qualitatively similar ERP pattern of a scrambling negativity followed by a P600 in all tested varieties. However, the P600 component—a late positive ERP response, which has been linked to the categorization of task-relevant stimuli—is selectively affected by the most prominent cue for argument identification in each variety, which is case marking in Standard German, but animacy in Zurich German and Fering. Thus, even closely related varieties may employ different processing strategies based on the language-specific availability of syntactic and semantic cues for argument identification.*

Neural Dynamics in the Processing of Personal Objects as an Index of the Brain Representation of the Self.

Across time, personal belongings incorporate semantic self-knowledge contributing to the subjective meaning of mineness and preference, whose access is prioritized. Although neuroimaging is starting to explore self-knowledge processes, more research is still necessary to better understand many aspects of these processes. One, the timing of the mechanisms involved, is the main purpose of the present study. Here, we investigate the differential patterns of event-related brain potentials and the underlying dynamic causal connectivity between neural generators to self-related objects ranging in self-relevance, as compared to non-personal-related objects. Personal objects elicited lower N2 and higher P3 components compared to non-personal objects, and those with high relevance showed the lowest N2 and the highest P3 amplitudes. Brain sources connectivity corresponding to N2-P3 ERP complex revealed an early connectivity between posterior cingulate/precuneus and parahippocampal gyrus, common for both types of objects. However, this parietal connectivity was kept in later latencies only for personal objects, also intervening the anterior cingulate as the main driver of information flow to the parietal network. Personal objects showed more extensive connectivity between parietal areas and these with anterior cingulate. These findings provide new evidence of a neural connectivity and its temporal course underlying the interplay of lower-level and higher-level cognitive processes relative to personal objects. Further, the results offer new insights on how superordinate mental representations enable distinctive processing of relevant belongings, starting relatively early in time.

Morphosyntactic integration in French sentence processing: Event-related brain potentials evidence

The present event-related brain potentials (ERP) study investigated the online integration of morphosyntactic information in auditory French sentences using a violation paradigm. Two main factors were manipulated: (1) The degree of complexity of the morphosyntactic violation, (2) The moment when the agreement violation occurs within the sentence. Both types of morphological agreement violations (intra/inter) elicited a biphasic anterior negativity/P600 ERP pattern. However, the amplitude of this pattern was larger for the interphrasal violation than for the intraphrasal one. This result suggests an easier detection but a more costly integration when the agreement violation occurs between elements belonging to different syntactic units. Moreover, an effect of position was observed but only when the violation concerned elements of a single syntactic unit. Taken together, the present findings suggest that morphological integration may be modulated by both the complexity of morphosyntactic agreement and the moment at which it takes place during the course of sentence processing.

Left inferior frontal gyrus mediates morphosyntax: ERP evidence from verb processing in left-hemisphere damaged patients

Neurocognitive models of language comprehension have proposed different mechanisms with different neural substrates mediating human language processing. Whether the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) is engaged in morpho-syntactic information processing is currently still controversially debated. The present study addresses this issue by examining the processing of irregular verb inflection in real words (e.g., swim > swum > swam) and pseudowords (e.g., frim > frum > fram) by using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in neurological patients with lesions in the LIFG involving Broca's area as well as healthy controls. Different ERP patterns in response to the grammatical violations were observed in both groups. Controls showed a biphasic negativity-P600 pattern in response to incorrect verb inflections whereas patients with LIFG lesions displayed a N400. For incorrect pseudoword inflections, a late positivity was found in controls, while no ERP effects were obtained in patients. These findings of different ERP patterns in the two groups strongly indicate an involvement of LIFG in morphosyntactic processing, thereby suggesting brain regions' specialization for different language functions.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Second-Language Syntactic Processes Are Related to Native and Second Language Distance Regardless of Age of Acquisition.

In the present study, we investigate how early and late L2 learners process L2 grammatical traits that are either present or absent in their native language (L1). Thirteen early (AoA = 4 years old) and 13 late (AoA = 18 years old) Spanish learners of Basque performed a grammatical judgment task on auditory Basque sentences while their event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The sentences contained violations of a syntactic property specific to participants' L2, i.e., ergative case, or violations of a syntactic property present in both of the participants' languages, i.e., verb agreement. Two forms of verb agreement were tested: subject agreement, found in participants' L1 and L2, and object agreement, present only in participants' L2. Behaviorally, early bilinguals were more accurate in the judgment task than late L2 learners. Early bilinguals showed native-like ERPs for verb agreement, which differed from the late learners' ERP pattern. Nonetheless, approximation to native-likeness was greater for the subject-verb agreement processing, the type of verb-agreement present in participants' L1, compared to object-verb agreement, the type of verb-agreement present only in participants' L2. For the ergative argument alignment, unique to L2, the two non-native groups showed similar ERP patterns which did not correspond to the natives' ERP pattern. We conclude that non-native syntactic processing approximates native processing for early L2 acquisition and high proficiency levels when the syntactic property is common to the L1 and L2. However, syntactic traits that are not present in the L1 do not rely on native-like processing, despite early AoA and high proficiency.

Time course of gender agreement violations containing emotional words

Previous studies have provided evidence of the brain's sensitivity to gender agreement violations using the technique of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Other studies have explored ERP patterns evoked by emotional words in isolation. This study investigates the time course of the processing of emotional words embedded in a sentence context using a gender agreement violation task. Overall, the results show an early component (N1) elicited by pleasant words, a left anterior negativity (LAN) evoked by gender agreement violations, and a late positivity (P600) which was sensitive to the emotionality of words and to the grammaticality of the sentence, with no interaction between these two factors. Such findings provide evidence on the temporal course of syntactic anomalies and affective word properties in the context of the sentence.

Conceptual Integration of Arithmetic Operations With Real-World Knowledge: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials.

Research on language processing has shown that the disruption of conceptual integration gives rise to specific patterns of event-related brain potentials (ERPs)-N400 and P600 effects. Here, we report similar ERP effects when adults performed cross-domain conceptual integration of analogous semantic and mathematical relations. In a problem-solving task, when participants generated labeled answers to semantically aligned and misaligned arithmetic problems (e.g., 6 roses+2 tulips=? vs. 6 roses+2 vases=?), the second object label in misaligned problems yielded an N400 effect for addition (but not division) problems. In a verification task, when participants judged arithmetically correct but semantically misaligned problem sentences to be "unacceptable," the second object label in misaligned sentences elicited a P600 effect. Thus, depending on task constraints, misaligned problems can show either of two ERP signatures of conceptual disruption. These results show that well-educated adults can integrate mathematical and semantic relations on the rapid timescale of within-domain ERP effects by a process akin to analogical mapping.

The N3 is sensitive to odd–even congruency information in arithmetic fact retrieval

This study investigated the behavioral and electrophysiological effects elicited by adults' simple addition verification when false answers agree or disagree with the odd-even status of the correct sum (parity congruency vs. parity incongruency), while they are near or far from correct (small vs. large splits). Event-related brain potentials were recorded from 18 students using a first-answer-then-problem paradigm. The results showed that odd-even congruency had a significant effect on the N3 latency with a small, but not a large split. Specifically, odd-even congruent answers with a small split elicited an N3 with a longer latency. Analyses of RT similarly indicated a bigger parity-congruency effect with small-split answers compared with large-split answers. This pattern parallels the corresponding effects on N3 and confirms that the N3 is sensitive to odd-even information in arithmetic fact retrieval and that there are clear links between the event-related brain potential pattern and behavioral effects.

When does the brain distinguish between genuine and ambiguous smiles? An ERP study

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded to assess the processing time course of ambiguous facial expressions with a smiling mouth but neutral, fearful, or angry eyes, in comparison with genuinely happy faces (a smile and happy eyes) and non-happy faces (neutral, fearful, or angry mouth and eyes). Participants judged whether the faces looked truly happy or not. Electroencephalographic recordings were made from 64 scalp electrodes to generate ERPs. The neural activation patterns showed early P200 sensitivity (differences between negative and positive or neutral expressions) and EPN sensitivity (differences between positive and neutral expressions) to emotional valence. In contrast, sensitivity to ambiguity (differences between genuine and ambiguous expressions) emerged only in later LPP components. Discrimination of emotional vs. neutral affect occurs between 180 and 430ms from stimulus onset, whereas the detection and resolution of ambiguity takes place between 470 and 720ms. In addition, while blended expressions involving a smile with angry eyes can be identified as not happy in the P200 (175–240ms) component, smiles with fearful or neutral eyes produce the same ERP pattern as genuinely happy faces, thus revealing poor discrimination.

The temporal dynamics of inflected word recognition: A masked ERP priming study of French verbs

Morphological aspects of human language processing have been suggested by some to be reducible to the combination of orthographic and semantic effects, while others propose that morphological structure is represented separately from semantics and orthography and involves distinct neuro-cognitive processing mechanisms. Here we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate semantic, morphological and formal (orthographic) processing conjointly in a masked priming paradigm. We directly compared morphological to both semantic and formal/orthographic priming (shared letters) on verbs. Masked priming was used to reduce strategic effects related to prime perception and to suppress semantic priming effects. The three types of priming led to distinct ERP and behavioral patterns: semantic priming was not found, while formal and morphological priming resulted in diverging ERP patterns. These results are consistent with models of lexical processing that make reference to morphological structure. We discuss how they fit in with the existing literature and how unresolved issues could be addressed in further studies.

Brain potentials for derivational morphology: An ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish

This study investigates brain potentials to derived word forms in Spanish. Two experiments were performed on derived nominals that differ in terms of their productivity and semantic properties but are otherwise similar, an acceptability judgment task and a reading experiment using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in which correctly and incorrectly formed derived words were presented in sentence contexts. The first experiment indicated productivity differences between the different nominalization processes in Spanish. The second experiment yielded a pattern of ERP responses that differed from both the familiar lexical-semantic and grammatical ERP effects. Violations of derivational morphology elicited an increased N400 component plus a late positivity (P600), unlike gender-agreement violations, which produced the biphasic LAN/P600 ERP pattern known from previous studies of morpho-syntactic violations. We conclude that the recognition of derived word forms engages both word-level (lexical-semantic) and decompositional (morpheme-based) processes.

A step into the anarchist's mind: examining political attitudes and ideology through event-related brain potentials.

The present study investigates patterns of event-related brain potentials following the presentation of attitudinal stimuli among political moderates (N=12) and anarchists (N=11). We used a modified oddball paradigm to investigate the evaluative inconsistency effect elicited by stimuli embedded in a sequence of contextual stimuli with an opposite valence. Increased late positive potentials (LPPs) of extreme political attitudes were observed. Moreover, this LPP enhancement was larger among anarchists than among moderates, indicating that an extreme political attitude of a moderate differs from an extreme political attitude of an anarchist. The discussion elaborates on the meaning of attitude extremity for moderates and extremists.

Individual differences in arithmetic skill reflected in event-related brain potentials

We used event-related brain potentials (ERP) to study the problem-size effect in individuals with high and low arithmetic skill. Participants were presented with a classic equality verification task, and problem size was manipulated by using small (e.g., 3 + 4), medium (e.g., 7 + 8) and large problems (e.g., 16 + 29). ERP analyses were time-locked to the onset of the second operand in order to address brain potentials during the production phase. High-skill individuals showed a positive slow wave when solving large problems and no differences in the ERP pattern when solving small and medium problems. In contrast, low-skill individuals showed a positive slow wave when solving medium and large problems. Given that differences between high and low skill individuals have been related to differences in calculation strategies, these results provide further support to the utility of using ERP as a signature of arithmetic strategy.

Individual differences in arithmetic ability reflected in the ERP pattern

The effects of inter-stimulus intervals on P300 from an oddball task (target and standard stimuli) and a single-stimulus task (targets only) employing simple visual stimuli were assessed in order to determine how a relatively long ISI affects event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Young adult subjects (n=16) responded by pressing a button to a visual target stimulus of each task condition. ISI was either 2.5 or 30 s and paradigm type was either the oddball or single-stimulus task. ERPs were recorded from the midline electrodes, with amplitude, mean area, and latency of the P300 and other components assessed. The results showed that P300 morphology was dramatically affected by task and ISI such that under the 2.5 s condition, the oddball paradigm produced typical ERP components, whereas the single-stimulus condition demonstrated minimal P300 amplitude. When ISI was 30 s, both the oddball and single-stimulus tasks produced robust P300 components but also evinced strong slow wave (SW) potentials, which contributed to the ERP measurement outcomes. It is concluded that P300 from visual stimuli can be elicited with both oddball and single-stimulus tasks when ISI is relatively long. ERPs from both paradigms produced appreciable SW activity, which needs to be considered when long ISI procedures are employed.

Contextual influences of emotional speech prosody on face processing: How much is enough?

The influence of emotional prosody on the evaluation of emotional facial expressions was investigated in an event-related brain potential (ERP) study using a priming paradigm, the facial affective decision task. Emotional prosodic fragments of short (200-msec) and medium (400-msec) duration were presented as primes, followed by an emotionally related or unrelated facial expression (or facial grimace, which does not resemble an emotion). Participants judged whether or not the facial expression represented an emotion. ERP results revealed an N400-like differentiation for emotionally related prime-target pairs when compared with unrelated prime-target pairs. Faces preceded by prosodic primes of medium length led to a normal priming effect (larger negativity for unrelated than for related prime-target pairs), but the reverse ERP pattern (larger negativity for related than for unrelated prime-target pairs) was observed for faces preceded by short prosodic primes. These results demonstrate that brief exposure to prosodic cues can establish a meaningful emotional context that influences related facial processing; however, this context does not always lead to a processing advantage when prosodic information is very short in duration.

Mapping ERP patterns from heterogeneous datasets: A simulation study

Haishan Liu, Gwen Frishkoff, Robert Frank & Dejing Dou Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Oregon, USA NeuroInformatics Center, University of Oregon, USA Language Imaging Laboratory, Medical College of Wisconsin, USA Introduction: We describe an ontology-based method for representation and integration of neuroscience data, with an application to event-related brain potentials (ERPs). ERP datasets from different labs are highly heterogeneous, in that they are acquired in different experiment contexts and may be analyzed and described using different methods. To address this issue, we use data mining to discover mappings across ERP patterns derived from alternative analysis methods and from datasets that are summarized using different spatial and temporal measures. We then use the discovered mappings to develop machine-readable descriptions of ERP patterns, or “ontologies” [1]. The resulting ontologies are being used to support data sharing and cross-laboratory analysis of ERP experiment results within our Neural Electromagnetic Ontologies consortium [2].

The interplay between semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution: Evidence from ERPs

In this event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined how semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution interact during discourse comprehension. We used a full factorial design that crossed referential ambiguity with semantic incoherence. Ambiguous anaphors elicited a sustained negative shift (Nref effect), and incoherent anaphors elicited an N400 effect. Simultaneously ambiguous and incoherent anaphors elicited an ERP pattern resembling that of the incoherent anaphors. These results suggest that semantic incoherence can preclude readers from engaging in anaphoric inferencing. Furthermore, approximately half of our participants unexpectedly showed common late positive effects to the three types of problematic anaphors. We relate the latter finding to recent accounts of what the P600 might reflect, and to the role of individual differences therein.

ERPs to words correlate with behavioral measures in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) participated in a research study that involved both electrophysiological and behavioral measures. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during auditory presentation of known and unknown words. Behavioral measures of language/cognitive function and severity of autism symptoms were also collected at the time of ERP testing and again one year later. In general, higher functioning children with ASD exhibited more localized brain effects for differences between known and unknown words. Lower functioning children with ASD had more diffuse patterns of response to the different word classes and also exhibited a stronger right hemisphere lateralization. That is, they showed differences between known and unknown words at many electrode sites and larger differences in the right hemisphere. In addition, significant correlations were obtained between specific brain wave measurements for both known and unknown words and the various behavioral measures. Patterns of ERPs effectively predicted later behavioral scores.

Electrophysiological correlates of selective attention: A lifespan comparison

BackgroundTo study how event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and underlying cortical mechanisms of selective attention change from childhood to old age, we investigated lifespan age differences in ERPs during an auditory oddball task in four age groups including 24 younger children (9–10 years), 28 older children (11–12 years), 31 younger adults (18–25), and 28 older adults (63–74 years). In the Unattend condition, participants were asked to simply listen to the tones. In the Attend condition, participants were asked to count the deviant stimuli. Five primary ERP components (N1, P2, N2, P3 and N3) were extracted for deviant stimuli under Attend conditions for lifespan comparison. Furthermore, Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and Late Discriminative Negativity (LDN) were computed as difference waves between deviant and standard tones, whereas Early and Late Processing Negativity (EPN and LPN) were calculated as difference waves between tones processed under Attend and Unattend conditions. These four secondary ERP-derived measures were taken as indicators for change detection (MMN and LDN) and selective attention (EPN and LPN), respectively. To examine lifespan age differences, the derived difference-wave components for attended (MMN and LDN) and deviant (EPN and LPN) stimuli were specifically compared across the four age groups.ResultsBoth primary and secondary ERP components showed age-related differences in peak amplitude, peak latency, and topological distribution. The P2 amplitude was higher in adults compared to children, whereas N2 showed the opposite effect. P3 peak amplitude was higher in older children and younger adults than in older adults. The amplitudes of N3, LDN, and LPN were higher in older children compared with both of the adult groups. In addition, both P3 and N3 peak latencies were significantly longer in older than in younger adults. Interestingly, in the young adult sample P3 peak amplitude correlated positively and P3 peak latency correlated negatively with performance in the Identical Picture test, a marker measure of fluid intelligence.ConclusionThe present findings suggest that patterns of event-related brain potentials are highly malleable within individuals and undergo profound reorganization from childhood to adulthood and old age.