Event-related Potential Paradigm Research Articles

The N400 effect captures nuances in implicit political preferences

We conducted a study in San Antonio, Texas, in the weeks preceding the 2022 state Governor election to determine if implicit or explicit measures of political preference could predict voter behavior. We adapted an established event-related potential (ERP) paradigm showing political statements to participants one word at the time where the last word made the statement pro-Republican or pro-Democratic. Our sample of college students included decided and undecided voters, and was reflective of the demographic make-up of south-central Texas. Our implicit measures were an established authoritarianism scale and the N400 effect to the sentence-final word. The N400 is an ERP to any stimulus that engages semantic memory and has been shown to measure implicit disagreement with political statements. Explicit measures of political preference and authoritarianism were predictive of vote choice. The expected N400 effect was found for Democratic voters, with larger amplitude to pro-Republican than pro-Democratic statements. Surprisingly, decided Republican voters showed no difference in N400 responses to pro-Republican and pro-Democratic statements and there was no group difference in the N400 effect. In turn, the N400 was not predictive of voter behavior. We argue that the N400 effect reflected individual political preferences, but that ultimately voter behavior aligned with partisan identity.

Low-Level Auditory Processing Correlates With Language Abilities: An ERP Study Investigating Sequence Learning and Auditory Processing in School-Aged Children.

Auditory processing and procedural learning deficits have been associated with language learning difficulties. We investigated the relationship of these skills and school-age language abilities in children with and without a history of late talking using auditory event related potentials (ERPs). Late talking (i.e., slow early language development) increases the risk of persistent language difficulties, but its causes remain unknown. Participants in this study were children with varying language abilities (n = 60). Half of the participants (n = 30) had a history of late talking. We measured procedural learning by manipulating the predictability of sine tone stimuli in a passive auditory ERP paradigm. Auditory processing was tested by examining how the presence of noise (increasing perceptual demands) affected the ERPs. Contrary to our hypotheses on auditory processing and language development, the effect of noise on ERPs did not correlate with school-age language abilities in children with or without a history of late talking. Our paradigm failed to reveal interpretable effects of predictability leaving us unable to assess the effects of procedural learning. However, better language abilities were related to weaker responses in a 75-175 ms time window, and stronger responses in a 150-250 ms time window. We suggest that the weak early responses in children with better language ability reflect efficient processing of low-level auditory information, allowing deeper processing of later, high-level auditory information. We assume that these differences reflect variation in brain maturation between individuals with varying language abilities.

Comparison of Event‐Related Potential Markers in Amyloid Positive vs. Amyloid Negative Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Dementia in a general neurological clinic

AbstractBackgroundWe used an automated Event Related Potentials (ERP) technique to compare ERP responses in amyloid positive and negative group of 75 patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Dementia in a general neurological outpatient clinic. Over the years, research labs have repeatedly reported abnormal ERP markers in patients with MCI and dementia. Recent advances in technology have made ERP testing safe, easy to use and low cost, thus rendering it suitable for clinical use. Indeed, ERPs have become more routinely used in clinical assessment of neurological patients with cognitive changes. The possibility that ERP could help identify amyloid status in MCI and dementia patients adds to the potential clinical utility of these biomarkers.MethodPatients with a history of cognitive complains underwent an auditory oddball ERP paradigm in conjunction with routine neurological evaluation and imaging studies. Standard neuropsychological testing were available in most cases. Amyloid PET imaging was done as part of the IDEAS (Imaging Dementia ‐Evidence for Amyloid Scanning) study and provided the readings for amyloid load.ERP responses were analyzed in the context of beta amyloid readings, and in relation to the patients’ degree of cognitive deficits.ResultFinal data analysis will be presented at the time of the conferenceConclusionThe possibility that ERP could help identify amyloid status in MCI and dementia patients adds to the potential clinical utility of these biomarkers. possibility that ERP could help identify amyloid status in MCI and dementia patients adds to the potential clinical utility of these biomarkers.

Comparison of Event‐Related Potential Markers in Amyloid Positive vs. Amyloid Negative Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Dementia in a general neurological clinic

AbstractBackgroundWe used an automated Event Related Potentials (ERP) technique to compare ERP responses in amyloid positive and negative group of 75 patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Dementia in a general neurological outpatient clinic. Over the years, research labs have repeatedly reported abnormal ERP markers in patients with MCI and dementia. Recent advances in technology have made ERP testing safe, easy to use and low cost, thus rendering it suitable for clinical use. Indeed, ERPs have become more routinely used in clinical assessment of neurological patients with cognitive changes. The possibility that ERP could help identify amyloid status in MCI and dementia patients adds to the potential clinical utility of these biomarkers.MethodPatients with a history of cognitive complains underwent an auditory oddball ERP paradigm in conjunction with routine neurological evaluation and imaging studies. Standard neuropsychological testing were available in most cases. Amyloid PET imaging was done as part of the IDEAS (Imaging Dementia ‐Evidence for Amyloid Scanning) study and provided the readings for amyloid load. ERP responses were analyzed in the context of beta amyloid readings, and in relation to the patients’ degree of cognitive deficits.ResultFinal data analysis will be presented at the time of the conferenceConclusionThe possibility that ERP could help identify amyloid status in MCI and dementia patients adds to the potential clinical utility of these biomarkers. possibility that ERP could help identify amyloid status in MCI and dementia patients adds to the potential clinical utility of these biomarkers.

Event-related potentials indicate differential neural reactivity to species and valence information in vocal stimuli in sleeping dogs

Dogs live in a complex social environment where they regularly interact with conspecific and heterospecific partners. Awake dogs are able to process a variety of information based on vocalisations emitted by dogs and humans. Whether dogs are also able to process such information while asleep, is unknown. In the current explorative study, we investigated in N = 13 family dogs, neural response to conspecific and human emotional vocalisations. Data were recorded while dogs were asleep, using a fully non-invasive event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. A species (between 250–450 and 600–800 ms after stimulus onset) and a species by valence interaction (between 550 to 650 ms after stimulus onset) effect was observed during drowsiness. A valence (750–850 ms after stimulus onset) and a species x valence interaction (between 200 to 300 ms and 450 to 650 ms after stimulus onset) effect was also observed during non-REM specific at the Cz electrode. Although further research is needed, these results not only suggest that dogs neurally differentiate between differently valenced con- and heterospecific vocalisations, but they also provide the first evidence of complex vocal processing during sleep in dogs. Assessment and detection of ERPs during sleep in dogs appear feasible.

In the prime of life: ERP evidence for syntactic comprehension priming in older adults

Background: Recent studies suggest older adults’ implicit learning of syntactic patterns remains largely intact. Syntactic priming has proven to be a sensitive tool to examine this implicit sensitivity. However, most priming studies with older adults have focused on production, and none have included an electrophysiological component. This study explores the neural correlates of syntactic priming in older adults’ comprehension. Method: We used a self-paced reading and event-related potential paradigm with groups of older and younger adults. Reduced Relative targets were primed, unprimed, or lexically boosted, while reading times and EEG recordings were obtained. Pre-tests of Working Memory and Processing Speed were also recorded. Results: Older adults showed intact priming and lexical boost on reading times, while lexical facilitation was dependent on syntactic overlap in the older but not the younger group. Syntactic priming was evident on N400 and P600 modulations on verbs and nouns in Reduced Relatives, and generally did not differ by age group. This suggests older and younger adults are equally susceptible to syntactic facilitation, and makes the case for more non-declarative, electrophysiological measurements of older adults’ sentence processing ability in future studies.

The application of ERP paradigms in clinical and non-clinical research

This comprehensive review paper examines the utilization of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in both clinical and non-clinical research. ERPs serve as valuable electrophysiological measures for studying neural activity associated with cognitive processes, offering high temporal accuracy and noninvasive observation of brain responses. The paper explores the benefits, challenges, and limitations of employing ERP paradigms in research. Technical expertise is necessary due to factors such as low signal-to-noise ratio and potential artifacts. These limitations must be addressed to ensure robust experimental design and accurate interpretation of findings. The review investigates the diverse applications of ERPs in clinical research, particularly in neurological and psychiatric conditions, where ERPs contribute to understanding underlying neural mechanisms and potential biomarkers. Additionally, non-clinical research areas, such as language processing and attentional mechanisms, are examined for their insights into cognitive processes. The current state of the field is discussed, with a focus on potential future directions. Technological advancements, including signal processing techniques, electrode design, and data analysis methods, are identified as areas for further development to improve the reliability and ease of use of ERP paradigms. It generally highlights the significance of ERPs as a powerful tool in cognitive neuroscience research. By examining their applications, challenges, and future prospects, the paper emphasizes the need for continued technological advancements to fully unlock the potential of ERPs in both research and clinical settings.

Variations in ERP data quality across paradigms, participants, and scoring procedures.

Although it is widely accepted that data quality for event-related potential (ERP) components varies considerably across studies and across participants within a study, ERP data quality has not received much systematic analysis. The present study used a recently developed metric of ERP data quality- the standardized measurement error (SME)-to examine how data quality varies across different ERP paradigms, across individual participants, and across different procedures for quantifying amplitude and latency values. The EEG recordings were taken from the ERP CORE, which includes data from 40 neurotypical college students for seven widely studied ERP components: P3b, N170, mismatch negativity, N400, error-related negativity, N2pc, and lateralized readiness potential. Large differences in data quality were observed across the different ERP components, and very large differences in data quality were observed across participants. Data quality also varied depending on the algorithm used to quantify the amplitude and especially the latency of a given ERP component. These results provide an initial set of benchmark values that can be used for comparison with previous and future ERP studies. They also provide useful information for predicting effect sizes and statistical power in future studies, even with different numbers of trials. More broadly, this study provides a general approach that could be used to determine which specific experimental designs, data collection procedures, and data processing algorithms lead to the best data quality.

Neural correlates of retrieval practice on the learning and memory retention of L3 French vocabulary

ABSTRACT This study used event-related potential (ERP) and retrieval practice effect paradigm to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the retrieval practice effect in a third language (L3) vocabulary learning. Thirty-five Chinese (First Language, L1)-English (Second Language, L2) bilinguals without prior knowledge of French (L3) studied 120 French (L3)–English (L2) word pairs and then practiced the word pairs through retrieval practice or repeated studying. On a final recognition test 30 minutes later, the participants were asked to perform old/new recognition judgments while recording electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Behavioural results found that retrieval practice led to a higher accuracy rate and faster response time in the final test than repeated studying. ERP results found that retrieval practice elicited less negative N400 waveforms than repeated studying at the frontal site and less negative N400 waveforms than new condition at the central-parietal sites. By contrast, retrieval practice only elicited more positive LPC waveforms than new condition at the parietal site. In sum, the present results provide first neural evidence that retrieval practice facilitates L3 (French) vocabulary learning. These findings suggest that retrieval practice might involve more semantic information processing in L3 vocabulary learning, which supports the elaborative retrieval hypothesis of the retrieval practice effect.

Tangent space alignment: Transfer learning for Brain-Computer Interface.

Statistical variability of electroencephalography (EEG) between subjects and between sessions is a common problem faced in the field of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). Such variability prevents the usage of pre-trained machine learning models and requires the use of a calibration for every new session. This paper presents a new transfer learning (TL) method that deals with this variability. This method aims to reduce calibration time and even improve accuracy of BCI systems by aligning EEG data from one subject to the other in the tangent space of the positive definite matrices Riemannian manifold. We tested the method on 18 BCI databases comprising a total of 349 subjects pertaining to three BCI paradigms, namely, event related potentials (ERP), motor imagery (MI), and steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP). We employ a support vector classifier for feature classification. The results demonstrate a significant improvement of classification accuracy, as compared to a classical training-test pipeline, in the case of the ERP paradigm, whereas for both the MI and SSVEP paradigm no deterioration of performance is observed. A global 2.7% accuracy improvement is obtained compared to a previously published Riemannian method, Riemannian Procrustes Analysis (RPA). Interestingly, tangent space alignment has an intrinsic ability to deal with transfer learning for sets of data that have different number of channels, naturally applying to inter-dataset transfer learning.

The development of cortical processing of speech differs between children with cochlear implants and normal hearing and changes with parental singing.

The aim of the present study was to investigate speech processing development in children with normal hearing (NH) and cochlear implants (CI) groups using a multifeature event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. Singing is associated to enhanced attention and speech perception. Therefore, its connection to ERPs was investigated in the CI group. The paradigm included five change types in a pseudoword: two easy- (duration, gap) and three difficult-to-detect (vowel, pitch, intensity) with CIs. The positive mismatch responses (pMMR), mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a and late differentiating negativity (LDN) responses of preschoolers (below 6 years 9 months) and schoolchildren (above 6 years 9 months) with NH or CIs at two time points (T1, T2) were investigated with Linear Mixed Modeling (LMM). For the CI group, the association of singing at home and ERP development was modeled with LMM. Overall, responses elicited by the easy- and difficult to detect changes differed between the CI and NH groups. Compared to the NH group, the CI group had smaller MMNs to vowel duration changes and gaps, larger P3a responses to gaps, and larger pMMRs and smaller LDNs to vowel identity changes. Preschoolers had smaller P3a responses and larger LDNs to gaps, and larger pMMRs to vowel identity changes than schoolchildren. In addition, the pMMRs to gaps increased from T1 to T2 in preschoolers. More parental singing in the CI group was associated with increasing pMMR and less parental singing with decreasing P3a amplitudes from T1 to T2. The multifeature paradigm is suitable for assessing cortical speech processing development in children. In children with CIs, cortical discrimination is often reflected in pMMR and P3a responses, and in MMN and LDN responses in children with NH. Moreover, the cortical speech discrimination of children with CIs develops late, and over time and age, their speech sound change processing changes as does the processing of children with NH. Importantly, multisensory activities such as parental singing can lead to improvement in the discrimination and attention shifting toward speech changes in children with CIs. These novel results should be taken into account in future research and rehabilitation.

The effect of contracting COVID on speech perception in high-school students: Evidence from the brain

Accumulating evidence suggest that some individuals who recovered from COVID experience “brain fog” aside from other organ dysfunctions. Many young individuals who contracted with COVID have relatively mild symptoms and rapid recovery. However, it is unknow whether COVID have any negative impact on their brain function. The current study compared the neural response to speech sounds in high-schooler with and without a history of contracting COVID. An event-related potential paradigm was used, and the electro-encephalogram (EEG) waves were timelocked to each speech stimulus. The mismatch negativity responses (the different between the standard and deviant sounds) were compared between the two participant groups. Preliminary analysis suggested that there are some differences between the experiment group and the control group. Further studies need to examine the long-term effect of COVID on brain and cognitive function in the young population.

Automatic change detection: Mismatch negativity and the now-classic Rensink, O'Reagan, and Clark (1997) stimuli.

Change blindness experiments had demonstrated that detection of significant changes in natural images is extremely difficult when brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene. On the other hand, research on the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of the event-related potentials (ERPs) identified sensitivity to events (deviants) different from the regularity of stimulus sequences (standards), even if the deviant and standard events are non-attended. The present study sought to investigate the apparent controversy between the experience under the change blindness paradigm and the ERP results. To this end, the stimulus of Rensink, O’Reagen, and Clark (1997) was adapted to a passive oddball ERP paradigm to investigate the underlying processing differences between the standard (original) and deviant (altered) stimuli measured in 22 subjects. Posterior negativity within the 280–330 ms latency range emerged as the difference between ERPs elicited by standard and deviant stimuli, identified as visual mismatch negativity (vMMN). These results raise the possibility that change blindness is not based on the lack of detailed visual representations or the deficiency of comparing two representations. However, effective discrimination of the two scene versions requires considerable frequency differences between them.

Differences in dogs' event-related potentials in response to human and dog vocal stimuli; a non-invasive study.

Recent advances in the field of canine neuro-cognition allow for the non-invasive research of brain mechanisms in family dogs. Considering the striking similarities between dog's and human (infant)'s socio-cognition at the behavioural level, both similarities and differences in neural background can be of particular relevance. The current study investigates brain responses of n = 17 family dogs to human and conspecific emotional vocalizations using a fully non-invasive event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. We found that similarly to humans, dogs show a differential ERP response depending on the species of the caller, demonstrated by a more positive ERP response to human vocalizations compared to dog vocalizations in a time window between 250 and 650 ms after stimulus onset. A later time window between 800 and 900 ms also revealed a valence-sensitive ERP response in interaction with the species of the caller. Our results are, to our knowledge, the first ERP evidence to show the species sensitivity of vocal neural processing in dogs along with indications of valence sensitive processes in later post-stimulus time periods.

A N400 event-related potential elicitation paradigm for Canadian French speakers*

Abstract The N400 event-related brain potential (ERP) can be used to evaluate language comprehension, and may be a particularly powerful tool for the assessment of individuals who are behaviourally unresponsive. This study presents a set of semantic violation sentences developed in Canadian French and characterizes their ability to elicit an N400 effect in healthy adults. A novel set of 100 French sentences were created and normed through two surveys that assessed sentence cloze probability (n = 98) and semantic plausibility (n = 99). The best 80 sentences (40 congruent; 40 incongruent) were selected for the final stimulus set and tested for their ability to elicit N400 effects in 33 French-speaking individuals. The final stimulus set successfully generated an N400 effect in the grand-average across all individuals, and in the grand-average within age groups (young, middle-age, and older adults). On a single-subject level, the final stimulus set elicited N400 effects in 76% of the participants. The feasibility of using this stimulus set to assess semantic processing in behaviourally unresponsive individuals was demonstrated in a case example of a French individual in a disorder of consciousness. These sentences enable the inclusion of Canadian French speakers in this simple assessment of language comprehension abilities.

Social EEG: A novel neurodevelopmental approach to studying brain-behavior links and brain-to-brain synchrony during naturalistic toddler-parent interactions.

Despite increasing emphasis on emergent brain-behavior patterns supporting language, cognitive, and socioemotional development in toddlerhood, methodologic challenges impede their characterization. Toddlers are notoriously difficult to engage in brain research, leaving a developmental window in which neural processes are understudied. Further, electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potential paradigms at this age typically employ structured, experimental tasks that rarely reflect formative naturalistic interactions with caregivers. Here, we introduce and provide proof of concept for a new "Social EEG" paradigm, in which parent-toddler dyads interact naturally during EEG recording. Parents and toddlers sit at a table together and engage in different activities, such as book sharing or watching a movie. EEG is time locked to the video recording of their interaction. Offline, behavioral data are microcoded with mutually exclusive engagement state codes. From 216 sessions to date with 2- and 3-year-old toddlers and their parents, 72% of dyads successfully completed the full Social EEG paradigm, suggesting that it is possible to collect dual EEG from parents and toddlers during naturalistic interactions. In addition to providing naturalistic information about child neural development within the caregiving context, this paradigm holds promise for examination of emerging constructs such as brain-to-brain synchrony in parents and children.

Machine-vision fused brain machine interface based on dynamic augmented reality visual stimulation

Objective. Brain–machine interfaces (BMIs) interpret human intent into machine reactions, and the visual stimulation (VS) paradigm is one of the most widely used of these approaches. Although VS-based BMIs have a relatively high information transfer rate (ITR), it is still difficult for BMIs to control machines in dynamic environments (for example, grabbing a dynamic object or targeting a walking person). Approach. In this study, we utilized a BMI based on augmented reality (AR) VS (AR-VS). The proposed VS was dynamically generated based on machine vision, and human intent was interpreted by a dynamic decision time interval approach. A robot based on the coordination of a task and self-motion system was controlled by the proposed paradigm in a fast and flexible state. Methods. Objects in scenes were first recognized by machine vision and tracked by optical flow. AR-VS was generated based on the objects’ parameters. The number and distribution of VS was confirmed by the recognized objects. Electroencephalogram (EEG) features corresponding to VS and human intent were collected by a dry-electrode EEG cap and determined by the filter bank canonical correlation analysis method. Key parameters in the AR-VS, including the effect of VS size, frequency, dynamic object moving speed, ITR and the performance of the BMI-controlled robot, were analyzed. Conclusion and significance. The ITR of the proposed AR-VS paradigm for nine healthy subjects was 36.3 ± 20.1 bits min−1. In the online robot control experiment, brain-controlled hybrid tasks including self-moving and grabbing objects were 64% faster than when using the traditional steady-state visual evoked potential paradigm. The proposed paradigm based on AR-VS could be optimized and adopted in other kinds of VS-based BMIs, such as P300, omitted stimulus potential, and miniature event-related potential paradigms, for better results in dynamic environments.

The effect of lexical status on prosodic processing in infants learning a fixed stress language.

In speech processing, in the first year of life, prosody and phoneme-relevant aspects serve different functions. Recent studies have assumed that the two aspects become integrated at around 9months of age. The present study investigates the effect of lexical status on stress processing in a fixed stress language. We hypothesize that lexicality modulates stress processing, and where the stress cue is in conflict with the lexical status (legal deviant condition), we will observe differences in age indicating the stage of integration. We tested 69 6 and 10month-old infants in an acoustic oddball event-related potential paradigm. A frequent word stimulus (baba) and a pseudoword (bebe) were used with legal versus illegal stress. We systematically swapped the standard and deviant roles of the different stress variants in two conditions. In the illegal deviant condition in the case of the word stimulus, the response pattern typical for the pseudoword (an MMR to the absence of the stress cue) was missing. This implies the suppression effect of lexicality. In the legal deviant condition, negative MMR (N-MMR) in the second time window indicated a facilitation effect of lexicality in both age groups. As only the 6-month-olds produced an N-MMR in the first time window, we concluded that in a fixed stress language, integration starts at 6months but is only completed by the age of 10months. Our results show that lexical status modulates stress processing at word level in a highly regularly stressed language in which stable, long-term language-specific stress representation exists from early infancy.

Searching for a "Brain Signature" of Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Event-Related Potentials and the Quest for Biomarkers of Cognition.

This review summarizes main applications of event-related potentials (ERPs) to the study of cognitive processes in persons with neurodevelopmental disorders, for whom traditional behavioral assessments may not be suitable. A brief introduction to the ERPs is followed by a review of empirical studies using passive ERP paradigms to address three main questions: characterizing individual differences, predicting risk for poor developmental outcomes, and documenting treatment effects in persons with neurodevelopmental disorders. Evidence across studies reveals feasibility of ERP methodology in a wide range of clinical populations and notes consistently stronger brain-behavior associations involving ERP measures of higher-order cognition compared with sensory-perceptual processes. The final section describes the current limitations of ERP methodology that need to be addressed before it could be used as a clinical tool and highlights the needed steps toward translating ERPs from group-level research applications to individually interpretable clinical use.

Neural Basis of Anticipatory Multisensory Integration.

The brain is able to gather different sensory information to enhance salient event perception, thus yielding a unified perceptual experience of multisensory events. Multisensory integration has been widely studied, and the literature supports the hypothesis that it can occur across various stages of stimulus processing, including both bottom-up and top-down control. However, evidence on anticipatory multisensory integration occurring in the fore period preceding the presentation of the expected stimulus in passive tasks, is missing. By means of event-related potentials (ERPs), it has been recently proposed that visual and auditory unimodal stimulations are preceded by sensory-specific readiness activities. Accordingly, in the present study, we tested the occurrence of multisensory integration in the endogenous anticipatory phase of sensory processing, combining visual and auditory stimuli during unimodal and multimodal passive ERP paradigms. Results showed that the modality-specific pre-stimulus ERP components (i.e., the auditory positivity -aP- and the visual negativity -vN-) started earlier and were larger in the multimodal stimulation compared with the sum of the ERPs elicited by the unimodal stimulations. The same amplitude effect was also present for the early auditory N1 and visual P1 components. This anticipatory multisensory effect seems to influence stimulus processing, boosting the magnitude of early stimulus processing. This paves the way for new perspectives on the neural basis of multisensory integration.