LPC Effect Research Articles

Conscious and Unconscious Processes in the Arithmetic Priming Task Depend on the Arithmetic Skill

The study examined the role of conscious and unconscious processes depending on the level of arithmetic skill. The participants were divided into two groups according to their arithmetic skill based on the calculation fluency test results. Masked and unmasked single-digit addition problems (primes) followed by correct and incorrect results were presented on the screen. In a conscious perception task (unmasked priming), when large and small problem results were presented, an arithmetic N400 and LPC effects were observed in both groups. In the case of unconscious perception (masked priming), when small problem results were presented, the LPC effect was observed in the group with low arithmetic skill. The fact that the LPC arithmetic effect was discovered during the unconscious presentation may indicate the automatic nature of the encoding and retrieving information processes, reflecting neurophysiological characteristics associated with the level of arithmetic skill.

Can local People's Congress supervision improve the expenditure behavior of local governments? Evidence from provincial budget review

The Local People's Congress budget review and supervision is an important measure to “effectively safeguard and improve people's livelihood” under the changes of the current major contradictions. Using the multi period DID method, we found that after the revision of the regulations, the local people's livelihood public service expenditure bias and expenditure efficiency were significantly improved. This conclusion is still valid after considering a series of robustness tests and possible explanations. The specific ways for it mainly include the constraint on the opportunistic behavior of local governments and the signal transmission function of the LPC's supervision. Further research shows that more effective media attention, more open and transparent rule of law environment, greater financial pressure and regional differences can all affect the effect of LPC's supervision of spending behavior. The research conclusion shows that the role of LPC supervision should be further played to ensure the development of local people's livelihood and promote the construction of government revenue and expenditure management system.

Event-related potentials reveal visual episodic memory deficits in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

ObjectiveTemporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients usually suffer from impaired episodic memory (EM), but its underlying electrophysiologic mechanism and impacted cognitive performance are unclear. We aim to investigate the association between episodic memory reserve and physiological measures of memory workload in TLE patients using Event-related potentials (ERP). MethodsA change detection task with image stimuli assesses visual episodic memory. During the memory encoding and decoding phases, the ERP signals were analyzed from twenty-nine TLE patients (twelve with left TLE patients, seventeen with TLE), and thirty healthy controls. Given that EM is a complex process involving many fundamental cognitive processes, the amplitudes and latencies of EM-related ERP (FN400, late positive potential (LPC), and late posterior negativity (LPN)), and the ERP reflecting the fundamental processes (P100, N100, P200, and P300) were calculated. Then we used a three-by-two factorial design on the ERP metrics for interaction and main effects. The correlation analysis among Wechsler Memory Scales-Chinese Revision (WMS-RC) results, behavioral data, and the ERPs was carried out. ResultsThe TLE patients performed worse in WMS-RC and the memory task. The increased P200 and decreased P300 amplitudes were observed in the TLE patients, and LPN was abnormal in only LTLE patients. For EM-related components, differences were observed in both the LTLE and RTLE patients: the lack of the FN400 effect, the lack of the reversed LPC effect, and the reduced FN400. No significant inter-group difference was detected for the latencies of all the ERPs. Additionally, there were significant correlations among WMS-RC scores, behaviors, and some ERP amplitudes. ConclusionsThe impaired EM is linked to the increased P200 and decreased P300 amplitudes. LPN seems to be sensitive to left temporal lobe dysfunction. More importantly, the abnormal old or new effects of the FN400 and LPC, and the reduced FN400 amplitude might be associated with the visual EM deficit in the TLE patients. These findings may assist in the deep understanding of the EM disorder and the evaluation of the side effects of antiepileptic drugs.

Chinese character unitization enhances item memory in addition to associative memory: Evidence from ERP and TFR

While the effect of unitization on associative memory has been established, its effect on item memory remains debated. This study aimed to investigate the influence of unitization on item memory using Chinese characters to manipulate unitization and recording scalp EEG to elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms. In the learning phase, participants were asked to determine whether the character pairs presented could form a Chinese compound character. In the subsequent testing phase, participants performed item recognition and associative recognition tasks. Behavioral results revealed that unitization not only improved associative memory but also facilitated item memory. Event-related potential analysis indicated there were FN400 effect (related to familiarity) and LPC effect (related to recollection) during associative recognition after unitization, however, only the LPC effect was observed for the item recognition. More importantly, time-frequency analysis demonstrated stronger θ oscillations (associated with recollection) in the unitized condition compared to the non-unitized condition, which further partially mediated the reduction in RT during the item recognition. These results suggest that unitization enhances item memory through recollection, thereby leading to more confident recognition judgments, and that unitization does not impair item processing within an association but rather enables more precise and accurate processing.

EEG-based univariate and multivariate analyses reveal that multiple processes contribute to the production effect in recognition

The production effect (PE) is the finding that reading words aloud rather than silently during study leads to improved memory. We used electroencephalography (EEG) techniques to detect the contributions of recollection, familiarity, and attentional processes to the PE in recognition memory, using Chinese stimuli. During the study phase, participants encoded each list item aloud, silently, or by performing a non-unique aloud (control) task. During the test phase, they made remember/know/new recognition judgments. We recorded EEG data in both phases. The behavioral results replicated the typical pattern with English stimuli: Recognition was better in the aloud condition than in the silent (and control) condition, and this PE was due to enhanced recollection and familiarity. At study, the amplitude of the P3b ERP component was greater in the aloud than in the silent/control conditions, suggesting that reading aloud increases attention or preparatory processing during the intention phase. At test, the recollection-based LPC old/new effect was largest in the aloud condition; however, the familiarity-based FN400 old/new effect was equivalent between the aloud condition and the silent/control conditions. Only the LPC effect correlated with the behavioral effect. Moreover, multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) showed that accurate classification of items as ‘aloud’ versus ‘new’ mainly occurred in the later period of the recognition response, consistent with the LPC old/new effect. Our findings suggest that the within-subject PE in recognition memory reflects enhanced attention and distinctiveness, rather than increased memory strength. More broadly, our findings suggest that encoding strategies such as production enhance recollection more than familiarity.

When interlocutor's face-language matching alters: An ERP study on face contexts and bilingual language control in mixed-language picture naming.

The present study used event-related potentials (ERP) to examine Chinese-English bilinguals' reactive and proactive language control as they performed mixed-language picture naming with face cues. All participants named pictures in Chinese (first language, L1) and English (second language, L2) across three sessions: a 25% face-language matched session, a baseline session without face cues, and a 75% face-language matched session. Behavioral analyses for reactive language control showed that the asymmetrical switch cost was larger for L2 than L1 in the 25% session and for L1 than L2 in the 75% session. ERP results revealed more negative N2 and LPC during L1 switching in 25% session but enhanced N2 during L2 switching in 75% session. Similar N2 and LPC effect was found during L1 and L2 switching in the baseline context. For proactive language control, the reversed language dominance and enhanced LPC amplitudes during L2 naming were consistent across the three sessions. Our findings suggest that reactive but not proactive language control is modulated by the ever-changing face contexts, which highlights the highly flexible bilingual control systems subserving nonlinguistic cues.

Event-related potentials show that parafoveal vision is insufficient for semantic integration.

Readers extract information from a word from parafoveal vision prior to looking at it. It has been argued that parafoveal perception allows readers to initiate linguistic processes, but it is unclear which stages of word processing are engaged: the process of extracting letter information to recognize words, or the process of extracting meaning to comprehend them. This study used the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique to investigate how word recognition (indexed by the N400 effect for unexpected or anomalous compared to expected words) and semantic integration (indexed by the Late-positive component; LPC effect for anomalous compared to expected words) are or are not elicited when the word is perceived only in parafoveal vision. Participants read a target word following a sentence that made it expected, unexpected, or anomalous, and read the sentences presented three words at a time in the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) with flankers paradigm so that words were perceived in parafoveal and foveal vision. We orthogonally manipulated whether the target word was masked in parafoveal and/or foveal vision to dissociate the processing associated with perception of the target word from either location. We found that the N400 effect was generated from parafoveally perceived words, and was reduced for foveally perceived words if they were previously perceived parafoveally. In contrast, the LPC effect was only elicited if the word was perceived foveally, suggesting that readers must attend to a word directly in foveal vision in order to attempt to integrate its meaning into the sentence context.

Litchi procyanidins inhibit colon cancer proliferation and metastasis by triggering gut-lung axis immunotherapy

Litchi chinensis seed, as a valuable by-product of the subtropical fruit litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.), has been confirmed to be rich in procyanidins (LPC). The anticarcinogenic properties of procyanidins has been primarily attributed to their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities. However, there is a comparative paucity of information on if and how LPC inhibits colon cancer. Here, LPC significantly inhibited CT26 colon cancer cells proliferation and metastasis in vivo and in vitro. In CT26 lung metastatic mice, the anti-metastatic effect of LPC relied on its regulation of gut microbiota such as increase of Lachnospiraceae UCG-006, Ruminococcus, and their metabolites such as acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid. In addition, LPC significantly inhibited CT26 colon cancer cells metastasis through increasing CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes infiltration and decreasing the number of macrophages. Antibiotics treatment demonstrated that the therapeutic effect of LPC depended on the gut microbiota, which regulated T cells immune response. Taken together, LPC had strong inhibitory effects on colon cancer pulmonary metastasis by triggering gut-lung axis to influence the T cells immune response. Our research provides a novel finding for the utilization of procyanidins in the future, that is, supplementing more fruits and vegetables rich in procyanidins is beneficial to the treatment of colon cancer, or it can be used as an adjuvant drug in clinical anti-tumor immunotherapy.

Effect of retrieval reward on episodic recognition with different difficulty: ERP evidence.

Previous studies found that the reward effect is stronger in more difficult retrieval tasks of item memory. However, it remains unclear whether the effect of reward is influenced by the memory task difficulty level in the source memory. We investigated the effects and neural mechanisms of the processing depth during encoding and rewards at retrieval on the item and source memory using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were required to carry out the congruity-judgment (deep processing) and size-judgment (shallow processing) tasks during encoding, and they completed separate object and background tests (half presented with reward) immediately after encoding. The results revealed that congruity-judgment (compare to size-judgment) task had longer response time in encoding phase, and evoked significantly greater reward differences at Prs (the hit rate minus the false alarm rate) in item retrieval, and the reward (relative to no reward) significantly improved recognition accuracy in source retrieval. ERP results also showed that congruity-judgment (compare to size-judgment) task evoked the larger N170, P3a, LPP and a decreased P3b of the stimuli in encoding phase, and elicited the wider distribution of LPC and LPN reward effects (i.e., the average amplitudes under the reward condition were significantly more positive than under the non-reward condition) in item retrieval, and the reward effects at FN400, LPC, and LPN were found only in the congruity-judged items with optimal difficulty in source retrieval. The results suggest that reward at retrieval evoked a greater boost in the congruity-judged stimuli, whether in item or source retrieval, which maybe be related to their optimal retrieval difficulty (Pr is closer to medium 0.50). This meant that the reward is more effective in memory retrieval with optimal difficulty.

Lysophosphatidylcholine (17:0) Improves HFD-Induced Hyperglycemia & Insulin Resistance: A Mechanistic Mice Model Study.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is characterized by the dysregulation of glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity, resulting in hyperglycemia. The exploration of a complex regulatory network in host metabolism homeostasis may raise a novel strategy for the prevention of T2D. A variety of metabolites serve as the endogenous ligand of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) and play an important role in the pathophysiological process of T2D and insulin resistance, however, the roles of remaining endogenous metabolites in insulin resistance and GPCRs still need to be explored. The effect of LPC (17:0) on hyperglycemia were proved in high fat diet (HFD) mice, and qPCR with Western blot technology was used to verify the downstream targets. Herein, we found that LPC (17:0) reduced blood glucose and alleviated insulin resistance and related metabolic disorders in high-fat diet induced (HFD) mice through activating GLP-1 and promoting insulin secretion. Further, the LPC (17:0) was found to stimulate intestinal GPR120, GPR35 and CALCR, with potential effect on GLP-1 stimulation. The above observation revealed LPC (17:0) as an endogenous protective factor with potential role on GPCRs, and it provided theoretical support for the development of LPC (17:0) as a potent drug candidate or health food additive for insulin resistance and hyperglycemia.

From encoding to retrieval: Change in level of unitization resolves debate about Unitization's effect on associative recognition.

Although it is widely accepted that familiarity could support associative recognition when the to-be-learn items are 'unitized' into a new representation, the effects of unitization on associative recognition and recollection remain much debated. The current study aimed to explain these debates by exploring when and how unitization benefits associative recognition using event-related potentials (ERPs). During the encoding phase, participants learned compound words and unrelated word pairs (i.e., High vs. Low level of unitization). At retrieval, the compound words were rearranged into new compound words (i.e., no-change) and unrelated word pairs (i.e., change). Similarly, the unrelated word pairs were rearranged into new unrelated word pairs (i.e., no-change) and compound words (i.e., change). Results showed that under the no-change condition, unitization did not affect associative recognition, nor its underlying processes. In contrast, under the change condition, unitization improved associative recognition by increasing both familiarity-related FN400 effect and recollection-related LPC effect. In addition, a planned comparison between the compound-change and unrelated-no change conditions-a common index for unitization effect in past studies-revealed that unitization could not only elicit significant FN400 effect, but also improve associative recognition by increasing LPC effect. Collectively, these results not only allowed to explain the current discrepancies in the literature concerning the effect of unitization on associative recognition, but also emphasized the importance of matching the level of unitization between the studied and rearranged word pairs.

Effect of lumbopelvic control on landing mechanics and lower extremity muscles\u2019 activities in female professional athletes: implications for injury prevention

BackgroundLumbopelvic control (LPC) has recently been associated with function, kinesiology, and load distribution on the limb. However, poor LPC has not been studied as a risk factor for lower limb injury in sports requiring frequent jump landings. The present study investigated the effects of LPC on landing mechanics and lower limb muscle activity in professional athletes engaged in sport requiring frequent landing.MethodsThis study was conducted on 34 professional female athletes aged 18.29 ± 3.29 years with the height and body mass of 173.5 ± 7.23 cm and 66.79 ± 13.37 kg, respectively. The landing error scoring system (LESS) and ImageJ software were used to assess landing mechanics. Wireless electromyography was also used to record the activity of the gluteus medius (GMed), rectus femoris, and semitendinosus. Lumbopelvic control was evaluated using the knee lift abdominal test, bent knee fall-out, active straight leg raising, and the PRONE test using a pressure biofeedback unit. Based on the LPC tests results, the participants were divided into two groups of proper LPC (n = 17) and poor LPC (n = 17).ResultsThere were significant differences between the groups with proper and poor LPC in terms of the LESS test scores (P = 0.0001), lateral trunk flexion (P = 0.0001), knee abduction (P = 0.0001), knee flexion (P = 0.001), trunk flexion (P = 0.01), and GMed muscle activity (P = 0.03). There were no significant differences in the activity of the rectus femoris and semitendinosus muscles, and ankle dorsiflexion (P > 0.05).ConclusionsPoor lumbopelvic control affects the kinematics and activity of the lower limb muscles, and may be a risk factor for lower limb injuries, especially of the knee.

Arithmetic processing in children with dyscalculia: an event-related potential study.

IntroductionDyscalculia is a specific learning disorder affecting the ability to learn certain math processes, such as arithmetic data recovery. The group of children with dyscalculia is very heterogeneous, in part due to variability in their working memory (WM) deficits. To assess the brain response to arithmetic data recovery, we applied an arithmetic verification task during an event-related potential (ERP) recording. Two effects have been reported: the N400 effect (higher negative amplitude for incongruent than for congruent condition), associated with arithmetic incongruency and caused by the arithmetic priming effect, and the LPC effect (higher positive amplitude for the incongruent compared to the congruent condition), associated with a reevaluation process and modulated by the plausibility of the presented condition. This study aimed to (a) compare arithmetic processing between children with dyscalculia and children with good academic performance (GAP) using ERPs during an addition verification task and (b) explore, among children with dyscalculia, the relationship between WM and ERP effects.Materials and MethodsEEGs of 22 children with dyscalculia (DYS group) and 22 children with GAP (GAP group) were recorded during the performance of an addition verification task. ERPs synchronized with the probe stimulus were computed separately for the congruent and incongruent probes, and included only epochs with correct answers. Mixed 2-way ANOVAs for response times and correct answers were conducted. Comparisons between groups and correlation analyses using ERP amplitude data were carried out through multivariate nonparametric permutation tests.ResultsThe GAP group obtained more correct answers than the DYS group. An arithmetic N400 effect was observed in the GAP group but not in the DYS group. Both groups displayed an LPC effect. The larger the LPC amplitude was, the higher the WM index. Two subgroups were found within the DYS group: one with an average WM index and the other with a lower than average WM index. These subgroups displayed different ERPs patterns.DiscussionThe results indicated that the group of children with dyscalculia was very heterogeneous and therefore failed to show a robust LPC effect. Some of these children had WM deficits. When WM deficits were considered together with dyscalculia, an atypical ERP pattern that reflected their processing difficulties emerged. Their lack of the arithmetic N400 effect suggested that the processing in this step was not useful enough to produce an answer; thus, it was necessary to reevaluate the arithmetic-calculation process (LPC) in order to deliver a correct answer.ConclusionGiven that dyscalculia is a very heterogeneous deficit, studies examining dyscalculia should consider exploring deficits in WM because the whole group of children with dyscalculia seems to contain at least two subpopulations that differ in their calculation process.

Unitization could facilitate item recognition but inhibit verbatim recognition for picture stimuli: behavioral and event-related potential study.

It is widely accepted that unitization can promote familiarity-based associative recognition, but the effect of unitization on item recognition remains unclear. The goals of this study were to elaborate on how unitization affected item recognition and the neural correlates of familiarity and recollection for item recognition. In study, the participants were asked to learn related and unrelated picture pairs, and in test, they were required to distinguish single old pictures form new pictures. In experiment 1, we used R/K/N paradigm to estimate the contribution of familiarity and recollection to item recognition, the results showed that unitization could improve item recognition through increasing recollection selectively. In experiment 2, we used ERP old/new effects to estimate the neural correlates of familiarity and recollection, the results showed that unitization could improve item recognition through a selective reduction in LPC effect. Inspired by DRM paradigm, in experiment 3, we divided the new pictures into semantically related lure pictures and semantically unrelated new pictures to explore the effects of unitization on item recognition and verbatim recognition (the ability to distinguish old pictures from lure pictures). The behavioral results showed that unitization could improve item recognition, but it damaged verbatim recognition. The ERP results revealed that there were larger LPC effects in the unrelated condition than in the related condition, regardless of item or verbatim recognition. In summary, we believed that unitization could indeed improve item recognition, but it damaged verbatim recognition.

How types of prior knowledge and task properties impact the category-based induction: diverging evidence from the P2, N400, and LPC effects

Category-based induction task was combined with ERP to unravel whether prior knowledge and property interact when inferring on genes or diseases. Larger P2 amplitudes for near taxonomic/causal distances relative to far ones, as well as larger LPC for taxonomic relation relative to thematic relation, are found in both gene and disease tasks. However, smaller N400 is found for taxonomic relation in gene task and thematic relation in disease task, respectively, and larger LPC at 700-850 ms for near taxonomic distance in the gene task and near causal distance in the disease task. These results suggested that the category-based inductive reasoning is context-sensitive, and there may be four stages of category-based inductive reasoning: the early automatic comparison of features/relations (P2), features/relations generalization process (N400), the extraction of common relationship/rule (LPC at 550-700 ms), the inference generation (LPC at 700-850 ms).

Effects of language context on executive control in unbalanced bilinguals: An ERPs study.

The influence of the language context on language control has been widely discussed in the bilingualism literature, and there is an increase in studies examining the effect of language context on domain-general executive control. However, it remains unclear how language contexts affect executive control performance. In the present study, we created single- and mixed-language comprehension contexts. Unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals completed a modified flanker task that was interleaved with a single-language or mixed-language picture-word matching task. The effects of language comprehension context on language control were reflected by the N2 and LPC effects. Executive control processes also differed depending on the language comprehension context, with faster behavioral responses and larger N2 but smaller P3 electrophysiological components in the mixed-language context. Moreover, the LPC amplitude in the mixed-language context predicted the behavioral performance in the executive control task. These findings suggested that flexible language control during language comprehension altered executive control processes in unbalanced bilinguals.

The Effects of Timbre on Neural Responses to Musical Emotion

Timbre is an important factor that affects the perception of emotion in music. To date, little is known about the effects of timbre on neural responses to musical emotion. To address this issue, we used ERPs to investigate whether there are different neural responses to musical emotion when the same melodies are presented in different timbres. With a cross-modal affective priming paradigm, target faces were primed by affectively congruent or incongruent melodies without lyrics presented in the violin, flute, and voice. Results showed a larger P3 and a larger left anterior distributed LPC in response to affectively incongruent versus congruent trials in the voice version. For the flute version, however, only the LPC effect was found, which was distributed over centro-parietal electrodes. Unlike the voice and flute versions, an N400 effect was observed in the violin version. These findings revealed different patterns of neural responses to musical emotion when the same melodies were presented in different timbres, and provide evidence for the hypothesis that there are specialized neural responses to the human voice.

Role of the LPC‐ATX‐LPA Axis in the Development of Endothelial Dysfunction

IntroductionLysophosphatidylcoline (LPC) is a bioactive lipid component of low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) that plays an important role in the development of atherosclerosis. Based on literature data, LPC causes endothelial dysfunction through decreasing NO bioavailability, however, the underlying mechanisms are not completely understood. LPC can be hydrolyzed into LPA by the cell secreted enzyme, autotaxin (ATX). Our aim was to investigate the role of the LPC‐ATX‐LPA axis in the development of endothelial dysfunction.MethodsMyographic measurements were performed on thoracic aorta segments isolated from male, adult C57/Bl6 mice. We examined the effect of 18:1 LPC (10 μM) on the NO‐dependent vasorelaxation after a 20 min incubation. The vessels were pre‐contracted with phenilephrine (PE), subsequently increasing concentrations of acetyl‐choline (ACh) were added to evoke vasorelaxation. Some of the vessels were pre‐treated with the ATX inhibitor BMP‐22 (10 μM) or the LPA1,3 antagonist Ki16425 (10 μM). FS‐3 substrate assay was used to measure ATX activity of the aortic tissue.ResultsLPC significantly attenuated ACh‐induced vasorelaxation without influencing the effect of the NO‐donor sodium nitroprusside. Interestingly, LPC‐induced suppression of the endothelium‐dependent vasorelaxation was more severe in the proximal, than the distal aorta that is more prone to develop atherosclerotic plaques. The ATX inhibitor BMP‐22 decreased the endothelial dysfunction and its protective effect was proved to be more pronounced in the proximal as compared to the distal segments. In addition, FS‐3 assay measurement for ATX activity showed higher activity in the proximal, than the distal part of the aorta. The LPA1,3 receptor inhibitor Ki16425 also reduced the effect of LPC in the proximal but not in the distal aorta.ConclusionsOur study shows that ATX and LPA are involved in LPC‐induced endothelial dysfunction. The results suggest that in this process LPA acts through LPA1 and / or LPA3 receptors. According to the literature the development of atherosclerosis is faster and more severe on the proximal segment of the thoracic aorta, therefore the LPC‐ATX‐LPA system is likely to contribute to the progression of the disease.Support or Funding InformationSupported by the Hungarian NRDIO (OTKA K‐112964, K‐125174 and NVKP_16‐1‐2016‐0042) as well as by the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Programme of the Ministry of Human Capacities in Hungary, within the framework of the Molecular Biology thematic programme of the Semmelweis University and by the EFOP‐3.6.3‐VEKOP‐16‐2017‐00009 grant.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Neural correlates of intra-sentential code-switching in the auditory modality

Abstract Code-switching, the interchangeable use of two languages, is a hallmark of bilingual language processing. Although code-switching occurs most often in spoken communication, studies examining the neural mechanisms of code-switching typically present code-switched materials visually, using reading paradigms. The present study examined intra-sentential code-switching in the auditory modality in Spanish-English bilinguals, using Event-Related Potential (ERP) and Time Frequency Representation (TFR) analyses. Specifically, this study examined whether listening to code-switched sentences is associated with lexical-semantic integration (indexed by an N400 effect) or sentence-level reanalysis (indexed by an LPC effect), and the extent to which neural patterns associated with listening to code-switched speech are modulated by switching direction (from the dominant language to the weaker language, or vice versa). ERP results showed that listening to a switch from the dominant to the weaker language elicits N400 and LPC effects, while TFR results showed a power decrease in the upper beta frequency band. In contrast, listening to a switch from the weaker to the dominant language elicited only an N400 effect, while TFR results showed a power increase in the alpha frequency band. The findings indicate that cognitive processes involved in listening to intra-sentential code-switches vary by switching direction. More specifically, we propose that listening to dominant-to-weaker language switches engages lexical processes in addition to sentence-level reanalysis to integrate the weaker language into the sentence frame, whereas weaker-to-dominant switches engages lexical-semantic integration accompanied by inhibition processes (i.e., listeners inhibit their dominant language as the sentence unfolds in their weaker language, and this inhibition must be released upon hearing a switch into the dominant language).

On predicting form and meaning in a second language.

We used event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate whether Spanish-English bilinguals preactivate form and meaning of predictable words. Participants read high-cloze sentence contexts (e.g., "The student is going to the library to borrow a . . ."), followed by the predictable word (book), a word that was form-related (hook) or semantically related (page) to the predictable word, or an unrelated word (sofa). Word stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) was 500 ms (Experiment 1) or 700 ms (Experiment 2). In both experiments, all nonpredictable words elicited classic N400 effects. Form-related and unrelated words elicited similar N400 effects. Semantically related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words, which however, did not depend on cloze value of the predictable word. Thus, we found no N400 evidence for preactivation of form or meaning at either SOA, unlike native-speaker results (Ito, Corley et al., 2016). However, non-native speakers did show the post-N400 posterior positivity (LPC effect) for form-related words like native speakers, but only at the slower SOA. This LPC effect increased gradually with cloze value of the predictable word. We do not interpret this effect as necessarily demonstrating prediction, but rather as evincing combined effects of top-down activation (contextual meaning) and bottom-up activation (form similarity) that result in activation of unseen words that fit the context well, thereby leading to an interpretation conflict reflected in the LPC. Although there was no evidence that non-native speakers preactivate form or meaning, non-native speakers nonetheless appear to use bottom-up and top-down information to constrain incremental interpretation much like native speakers do. (PsycINFO Database Record