Electrophysiological correlates of cross-linguistic semantic integration in hearing signers: N400 and LPC.

PubMed

Zachau, Swantje; Korpilahti, Pirjo; Hämäläinen, Jarmo A; Ervast, Leena; Heinänen, Kaisu; Suominen, Kalervo; Lehtihalmes, Matti; Leppänen, Paavo H T

2014-07-01

We explored semantic integration mechanisms in native and non-native hearing users of sign language and non-signing controls. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants performed a semantic decision task for priming lexeme pairs. Pairs were presented either within speech or across speech and sign language. Target-related ERP responses were subjected to principal component analyses (PCA), and neurocognitive basis of semantic integration processes were assessed by analyzing the N400 and the late positive complex (LPC) components in response to spoken (auditory) and signed (visual) antonymic and unrelated targets. Semantically-related effects triggered across modalities would indicate a similar tight interconnection between the signers׳ two languages like that described for spoken language bilinguals. Remarkable structural similarity of the N400 and LPC components with varying group differences between the spoken and signed targets were found. The LPC was the dominant response. The controls׳ LPC differed from the LPC of the two signing groups. It was reduced to the auditory unrelated targets and was less frontal for all the visual targets. The visual LPC was more broadly distributed in native than non-native signers and was left-lateralized for the unrelated targets in the native hearing signers only. Semantic priming effects were found for the auditory N400 in all groups, but only native hearing signers revealed a clear N400 effect to the visual targets. Surprisingly, the non-native signers revealed no semantically-related processing effect to the visual targets reflected in the N400 or the LPC; instead they appeared to rely more on visual post-lexical analyzing stages than native signers. We conclude that native and non-native signers employed different processing strategies to integrate signed and spoken semantic content. It appeared that the signers׳ semantic processing system was affected by group-specific factors like language

Does bimodal stimulus presentation increase ERP components usable in BCIs?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thurlings, Marieke E.; Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Van Erp, Jan B. F.; Blankertz, Benjamin; Werkhoven, Peter J.

2012-08-01

Event-related potential (ERP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) employ differences in brain responses to attended and ignored stimuli. Typically, visual stimuli are used. Tactile stimuli have recently been suggested as a gaze-independent alternative. Bimodal stimuli could evoke additional brain activity due to multisensory integration which may be of use in BCIs. We investigated the effect of visual-tactile stimulus presentation on the chain of ERP components, BCI performance (classification accuracies and bitrates) and participants’ task performance (counting of targets). Ten participants were instructed to navigate a visual display by attending (spatially) to targets in sequences of either visual, tactile or visual-tactile stimuli. We observe that attending to visual-tactile (compared to either visual or tactile) stimuli results in an enhanced early ERP component (N1). This bimodal N1 may enhance BCI performance, as suggested by a nonsignificant positive trend in offline classification accuracies. A late ERP component (P300) is reduced when attending to visual-tactile compared to visual stimuli, which is consistent with the nonsignificant negative trend of participants’ task performance. We discuss these findings in the light of affected spatial attention at high-level compared to low-level stimulus processing. Furthermore, we evaluate bimodal BCIs from a practical perspective and for future applications.

From amnesia to dementia: ERP studies of memory and language.

PubMed

Taylor, Jason R; Olichney, John M

2007-01-01

Cognitive event-related potential (ERP) studies of memory and language impairments in amnesia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are reviewed. Well-circumscribed lesions of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) or diencephalon causing an amnestic syndrome, an inability to encode and retrieve episodic memories beyond the brief duration of working memory, appear to produce altered plasticity of the late positive P600 component, but usually spare P300 and N400 components. The neuropathology of AD affects MTL and extends to neocortical association areas, causing deficits of episodic and semantic memory. In AD dementia, the P300, N400, and P600 all commonly show abnormalities. ERP studies of individuals with mild cognitive impairment may reveal neurophysiological changes prior to the emergence of clinical deficits, which could advance the early detection and diagnosis of AD.

An ERP study of famous face incongruity detection in middle age.

PubMed

Chaby, L; Jemel, B; George, N; Renault, B; Fiori, N

2001-04-01

Age-related changes in famous face incongruity detection were examined in middle-aged (mean = 50.6) and young (mean = 24.8) subjects. Behavioral and ERP responses were recorded while subjects, after a presentation of a "prime face" (a famous person with the eyes masked), had to decide whether the following "test face" was completed with its authentic eyes (congruent) or with other eyes (incongruent). The principal effects of advancing age were (1) behavioral difficulties in discriminating between incongruent and congruent faces; (2) a reduced N400 effect due to N400 enhancement for both congruent and incongruent faces; (3) a latency increase of both N400 and P600 components. ERPs to primes (face encoding) were not affected by aging. These results are interpreted in terms of early signs of aging. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

SOA-dependent N400 and P300 semantic priming effects using pseudoword primes and a delayed lexical decision.

PubMed

Hill, Holger; Ott, Friederike; Weisbrod, Matthias

2005-06-01

In a previous semantic priming study, we found a semantic distance effect on the lexical-decision-related P300 when SOA was short (150 ms) only, but no different RT and N400 priming effects between short and long (700 ms) SOAs. To investigate this further, we separated priming from lexical decision, using a delayed lexical decision in the present study. In the short SOA only, primed targets evoked an early peaking (approximately 480 ms) P300-like component, probably because the subject detected the semantic relationship implicitly. We hypothesize that in tasks requiring an immediate lexical decision, this early P300 and the later lexical decision P300 (approximately 600 ms) are additive. Secondly, we found both a direct and an indirect priming effect for both SOAs for the ERP amplitude of the N400 time window. However the N400 component itself was considerably larger in the long SOA than in the short SOA. We interpreted this finding as an ERP correlate for deeper semantic processing in the long SOA, due to increased attention that was provoked by the use of pseudoword primes. In contrast, in the short SOA, subjects might have used a shallowed semantic processing. N400, P300, and RTs are sensitive to semantic priming-but the modulation patterns are not consistent. This raises the question as to which variable reflects an immediate physiological correlate of semantic priming, and which variable reflects co-occurring processes associated with semantic priming.

Font Effects of Chinese Characters and Pseudo-Characters on the N400: Evidence for an Orthographic Processing View

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lv, Caixia; Wang, Quanhong

2012-01-01

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a Chinese character decision task to examine whether N400 amplitude is modulated by stimulus font. Results revealed large negative-going ERPs in an N400 time window of 300-500 ms to stimuli presented in degraded Xing Kai Ti (XKT) font compared with more intact Song Ti (ST) font regardless…

Modeling the N400 ERP component as transient semantic over-activation within a neural network model of word comprehension

PubMed Central

Cheyette, Samuel J.; Plaut, David C.

2016-01-01

The study of the N400 event-related brain potential has provided fundamental insights into the nature of real-time comprehension processes, and its amplitude is modulated by a wide variety of stimulus and context factors. It is generally thought to reflect the difficulty of semantic access, but formulating a precise characterization of this process has proved difficult. Laszlo and colleagues (Laszlo & Plaut, 2012, Brain and Language, 120, 271-281; Laszlo & Armstrong, 2014, Brain and Language, 132, 22-27) used physiologically constrained neural networks to model the N400 as transient over-activation within semantic representations, arising as a consequence of the distribution of excitation and inhibition within and between cortical areas. The current work extends this approach to successfully model effects on both N400 amplitudes and behavior of word frequency, semantic richness, repetition, semantic and associative priming, and orthographic neighborhood size. The account is argued to be preferable to one based on “implicit semantic prediction error” (Rabovsky & McRae, 2014, Cognition, 132, 68-98) for a number of reasons, the most fundamental of which is that the current model actually produces N400-like waveforms in its real-time activation dynamics. PMID:27871623

Modeling the N400 ERP component as transient semantic over-activation within a neural network model of word comprehension.

PubMed

Cheyette, Samuel J; Plaut, David C

2017-05-01

The study of the N400 event-related brain potential has provided fundamental insights into the nature of real-time comprehension processes, and its amplitude is modulated by a wide variety of stimulus and context factors. It is generally thought to reflect the difficulty of semantic access, but formulating a precise characterization of this process has proved difficult. Laszlo and colleagues (Laszlo & Plaut, 2012; Laszlo & Armstrong, 2014) used physiologically constrained neural networks to model the N400 as transient over-activation within semantic representations, arising as a consequence of the distribution of excitation and inhibition within and between cortical areas. The current work extends this approach to successfully model effects on both N400 amplitudes and behavior of word frequency, semantic richness, repetition, semantic and associative priming, and orthographic neighborhood size. The account is argued to be preferable to one based on "implicit semantic prediction error" (Rabovsky & McRae, 2014) for a number of reasons, the most fundamental of which is that the current model actually produces N400-like waveforms in its real-time activation dynamics. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multiple Component Event-Related Potential (mcERP) Estimation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Knuth, K. H.; Clanton, S. T.; Shah, A. S.; Truccolo, W. A.; Ding, M.; Bressler, S. L.; Trejo, L. J.; Schroeder, C. E.; Clancy, Daniel (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

We show how model-based estimation of the neural sources responsible for transient neuroelectric signals can be improved by the analysis of single trial data. Previously, we showed that a multiple component event-related potential (mcERP) algorithm can extract the responses of individual sources from recordings of a mixture of multiple, possibly interacting, neural ensembles. McERP also estimated single-trial amplitudes and onset latencies, thus allowing more accurate estimation of ongoing neural activity during an experimental trial. The mcERP algorithm is related to informax independent component analysis (ICA); however, the underlying signal model is more physiologically realistic in that a component is modeled as a stereotypic waveshape varying both in amplitude and onset latency from trial to trial. The result is a model that reflects quantities of interest to the neuroscientist. Here we demonstrate that the mcERP algorithm provides more accurate results than more traditional methods such as factor analysis and the more recent ICA. Whereas factor analysis assumes the sources are orthogonal and ICA assumes the sources are statistically independent, the mcERP algorithm makes no such assumptions thus allowing investigators to examine interactions among components by estimating the properties of single-trial responses.

ERP evidence for memory and predictive mechanisms in word-to-text integration

PubMed Central

Stafura, Joseph Z.; Rickles, Benjamin; Perfetti, Charles A.

2016-01-01

During reading, word-to-text integration processes proceed quickly and incrementally through both prospective (predictive) and retrospective (memory) processes. Across a sentence boundary, where prediction may be less functional, memorial processes may be especially important. We tested predictive and memory mechanisms with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded on the first content word across a sentence boundary by manipulating the direction of association between this word and one from the preceding sentence. For comparison with this text comprehension (TC) task, we tested these same word pairs in a word meaning judgment (MJ) task. In both tasks we found reduced N400 amplitudes over central scalp electrodes when the two words were either forward-associated (FA) or backward-associated (BA), relative to task-specific baseline conditions. In the MJ task, FA pairs produced a greater reduction in the N400 reduction than BA pairs over right parietal areas. However, in the TC task, BA pairs produced a greater N400 reduction than FA pairs over left parietal electrodes. A temporal principal component analysis of TC and MJ data showed a component reflecting the central N400. Additional components from TC data reflected FA-BA differences during early (N200) and late (parietal N400 and LPC) phases of processing. Comprehension skill predicted association effects in the MJ task, especially FA, and the BA central N400 effects in the TC task. The results demonstrate that, beyond N400 indicators of prediction effects, ERPs reflect the role of memory processes in word-to-text integration across sentences, part of a dynamic interplay between anticipatory and memorial processes that support comprehension. PMID:27110578

Conflicts in language processing: a new perspective on the N400-P600 distinction.

PubMed

Frenzel, Sabine; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina

2011-02-01

Conflicts in language processing often correlate with late positive event-related brain potentials (ERPs), particularly when they are induced by inconsistencies between different information types (e.g. syntactic and thematic/plausibility information). However, under certain circumstances, similar sentence-level interpretation conflicts (inanimate subjects) engender negativity effects (N400s) instead. The present ERP study was designed to shed light on this inconsistency. In previous studies showing monophasic positivities (P600s), the conflict was irresolvable and induced via a verb, whereas N400s were elicited by resolvable, argument-induced conflicts. Here, we therefore examined irresolvable argument-induced conflicts (pronoun case violations) in simple English sentences. Conflict strength was manipulated via the animacy of the first argument and the agreement status of the verb. Processing conflicts engendered a biphasic N400-late positivity pattern, with only the N400 sensitive to conflict strength (animacy). These results suggest that argument-induced conflicts engender N400 effects, (which we interpret in terms of increased competition for the Actor role) whereas irresolvable conflicts elicit late positivities (which we interpret as reflecting well-formedness categorisation). Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

N400 and the activation of prejudice against rural migrant workers in China.

PubMed

Wang, Lei; Ma, Qingguo; Song, Zhaofeng; Shi, Yisi; Wang, Yi; Pfotenhauer, Lydia

2011-02-23

Rural migrant workers (RMWs) are a special social group under the household registration system in China. Although RMWs work in the city, they are not issued a permanent city resident card, and are hardly integrated into the city life. City residents harbour strong negative stereotypes about RMWs. Facing a word-pair comprising a status noun (RMWs vs. Unban workers) followed by an adjective, 16 young participants were required to classify the adjective as being either negative or positive, while the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. An ERP component identified as the N400 was found, and was studied with the question whether its amplitude reflected the effects of prejudice against RMWs. The reaction times to identify the positive adjectives preceded by the nouns pertaining to RMWs were significantly longer than to those preceded by nouns denoting Urban workers. The amplitude of the N400 evoked in RMW-Positive adjective condition was significantly larger than in Urban worker-Positive adjective condition, possibly reflecting the higher conflict when participants identified the adjectives as positive primed by RMWs. These findings revealed that negative stereotypes about RMWs still exist today, although Chinese mainstream media has disseminated positive messages about the RMWs for decades. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Test-retest reliability and stability of N400 effects in a word-pair semantic priming paradigm.

PubMed

Kiang, Michael; Patriciu, Iulia; Roy, Carolyn; Christensen, Bruce K; Zipursky, Robert B

2013-04-01

Elicited by any meaningful stimulus, the N400 event-related potential (ERP) component is reduced when the stimulus is related to a preceding one. This N400 semantic priming effect has been used to probe abnormal semantic relationship processing in clinical disorders, and suggested as a possible biomarker for treatment studies. Validating N400 semantic priming effects as a clinical biomarker requires characterizing their test-retest reliability. We assessed test-retest reliability of N400 semantic priming in 16 healthy adults who viewed the same related and unrelated prime-target word pairs in two sessions one week apart. As expected, N400 amplitudes were smaller for related versus unrelated targets across sessions. N400 priming effects (amplitude differences between unrelated and related targets) were highly correlated across sessions (r=0.85, P<0.0001), but smaller in the second session due to larger N400s to related targets. N400 priming effects have high reliability over a one-week interval. They may decrease with repeat testing, possibly because of motivational changes. Use of N400 priming effects in treatment studies should account for possible magnitude decreases with repeat testing. Further research is needed to delineate N400 priming effects' test-retest reliability and stability in different age and clinical groups, and with different stimulus types. Copyright © 2012 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Perceptual reversals during binocular rivalry: ERP components and their concomitant source differences.

PubMed

Britz, Juliane; Pitts, Michael A

2011-11-01

We used an intermittent stimulus presentation to investigate event-related potential (ERP) components associated with perceptual reversals during binocular rivalry. The combination of spatiotemporal ERP analysis with source imaging and statistical parametric mapping of the concomitant source differences yielded differences in three time windows: reversals showed increased activity in early visual (∼120 ms) and in inferior frontal and anterior temporal areas (∼400-600 ms) and decreased activity in the ventral stream (∼250-350 ms). The combination of source imaging and statistical parametric mapping suggests that these differences were due to differences in generator strength and not generator configuration, unlike the initiation of reversals in right inferior parietal areas. These results are discussed within the context of the extensive network of brain areas that has been implicated in the initiation, implementation, and appraisal of bistable perceptual reversals. Copyright © 2011 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Sequential Processing and the Matching-Stimulus Interval Effect in ERP Components: An Exploration of the Mechanism Using Multiple Regression

PubMed Central

Steiner, Genevieve Z.; Barry, Robert J.; Gonsalvez, Craig J.

2016-01-01

In oddball tasks, increasing the time between stimuli within a particular condition (target-to-target interval, TTI; nontarget-to-nontarget interval, NNI) systematically enhances N1, P2, and P300 event-related potential (ERP) component amplitudes. This study examined the mechanism underpinning these effects in ERP components recorded from 28 adults who completed a conventional three-tone oddball task. Bivariate correlations, partial correlations and multiple regression explored component changes due to preceding ERP component amplitudes and intervals found within the stimulus series, rather than constraining the task with experimentally constructed intervals, which has been adequately explored in prior studies. Multiple regression showed that for targets, N1 and TTI predicted N2, TTI predicted P3a and P3b, and Processing Negativity (PN), P3b, and TTI predicted reaction time. For rare nontargets, P1 predicted N1, NNI predicted N2, and N1 predicted Slow Wave (SW). Findings show that the mechanism is operating on separate stages of stimulus-processing, suggestive of either increased activation within a number of stimulus-specific pathways, or very long component generator recovery cycles. These results demonstrate the extent to which matching-stimulus intervals influence ERP component amplitudes and behavior in a three-tone oddball task, and should be taken into account when designing similar studies. PMID:27445774

Sequential Processing and the Matching-Stimulus Interval Effect in ERP Components: An Exploration of the Mechanism Using Multiple Regression.

PubMed

Steiner, Genevieve Z; Barry, Robert J; Gonsalvez, Craig J

2016-01-01

In oddball tasks, increasing the time between stimuli within a particular condition (target-to-target interval, TTI; nontarget-to-nontarget interval, NNI) systematically enhances N1, P2, and P300 event-related potential (ERP) component amplitudes. This study examined the mechanism underpinning these effects in ERP components recorded from 28 adults who completed a conventional three-tone oddball task. Bivariate correlations, partial correlations and multiple regression explored component changes due to preceding ERP component amplitudes and intervals found within the stimulus series, rather than constraining the task with experimentally constructed intervals, which has been adequately explored in prior studies. Multiple regression showed that for targets, N1 and TTI predicted N2, TTI predicted P3a and P3b, and Processing Negativity (PN), P3b, and TTI predicted reaction time. For rare nontargets, P1 predicted N1, NNI predicted N2, and N1 predicted Slow Wave (SW). Findings show that the mechanism is operating on separate stages of stimulus-processing, suggestive of either increased activation within a number of stimulus-specific pathways, or very long component generator recovery cycles. These results demonstrate the extent to which matching-stimulus intervals influence ERP component amplitudes and behavior in a three-tone oddball task, and should be taken into account when designing similar studies.

Limited role of phonology in reading Chinese two-character compounds: evidence from an ERP study.

PubMed

Wong, A W-K; Wu, Y; Chen, H-C

2014-01-03

This study investigates the role of phonology in reading logographic Chinese. Specifically, whether phonological information is obligatorily activated in reading Chinese two-character compounds was examined using the masked-priming paradigm with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Twenty-two native Cantonese Chinese speakers participated in a lexical decision experiment. The targets were visually presented Chinese two-character strings and the participants were asked to judge whether the target in each trial was a legitimate compound word in Chinese. Each target was preceded by a briefly presented word prime. The prime and target shared an identical constituent character in the Character-related condition, a syllable in the Syllable-related condition, were semantically related in the Semantic-related condition, and were unrelated (both phonologically and semantically) in the control condition. The prime–target relationship was manipulated to probe the effects of word-form (i.e., character- or syllable-relatedness) and word-semantic relatedness on phonological (as indexed by an N250 ERP component) and semantic (as indexed by an N400 ERP component) processing. Significant and comparable facilitation effects in reaction time, relative to the control, were observed in the Character-related and the Semantic-related conditions. Furthermore, a significant reduction in ERP amplitudes (N250), relative to the control, was obtained in the Character-related condition in the time window of 150-250 ms post target. In addition, attenuation in ERP amplitudes was found in the Semantic-related condition in the window of 250-500 ms (N400). However, no significant results (neither behavioral nor ERP) were found in the Syllable-related condition. These results suggest that phonological activation is not mandatory and the role of phonology is minimal at best in reading Chinese two-character compounds.

A funny thing happened on the way to articulation: N400 attenuation despite behavioral interference in picture naming

PubMed Central

Blackford, Trevor; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Grainger, Jonathan; Kuperberg, Gina R.

2013-01-01

We measured Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and naming times to picture targets preceded by masked words (stimulus onset asynchrony: 80 ms) that shared one of three different types of relationship with the names of the pictures: (1) Identity related, in which the prime was the name of the picture (“socks” – ), (2) Phonemic Onset related, in which the initial segment of the prime was the same as the name of the picture (“log” – ), and (3) Semantically related in which the prime was a co–category exemplar and associated with the name of the picture (“cake” – ). Each type of related picture target was contrasted with an Unrelated picture target, resulting in a 3 × 2 design that crossed Relationship Type between the word and the target picture (Identity, Phonemic Onset and Semantic) with Relatedness (Related and Unrelated). Modulation of the N400 component to related (versus unrelated) pictures was taken to reflect semantic processing at the interface between the picture's conceptual features and its lemma, while naming times reflected the end product of all stages of processing. Both attenuation of the N400 and shorter naming times were observed to pictures preceded by Identity related (versus Unrelated) words. No ERP effects within 600 ms, but shorter naming times, were observed to pictures preceded by Phonemic Onset related (versus Unrelated) words. An attenuated N400 (electrophysiological semantic priming) but longer naming times (behavioral semantic interference) were observed to pictures preceded by Semantically related (versus Unrelated) words. These dissociations between ERP modulation and naming times suggest that (a) phonemic onset priming occurred late, during encoding of the articulatory response, and (b) semantic behavioral interference was not driven by competition at the lemma level of representation, but rather occurred at a later stage of production. PMID:22245030

N400 Deficits from Semantic Matching of Pictures in Probands and First-Degree Relatives from Multiplex Schizophrenia Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guerra, Seidel; Ibanez, Agustin; Martin, Migdyrai; Bobes, Maria Antonieta; Reyes, Adnelys; Mendoza, Raul; Bravo, Tania; Dominguez, Mayelin; Sosa, Mitchell Valdes

2009-01-01

Endophenotypes is one emerging strategy in schizophrenia research that is being used to identify the functional importance of genetically transmitted, brain-based deficits present in this disease. Currently, event-related potentials (ERPs) are timely used in this search. Several ERPs, including N400, present deficits in relation to schizophrenia.…

Re-examination of Chinese semantic processing and syntactic processing: evidence from conventional ERPs and reconstructed ERPs by residue iteration decomposition (RIDE).

PubMed

Wang, Fang; Ouyang, Guang; Zhou, Changsong; Wang, Suiping

2015-01-01

A number of studies have explored the time course of Chinese semantic and syntactic processing. However, whether syntactic processing occurs earlier than semantics during Chinese sentence reading is still under debate. To further explore this issue, an event-related potentials (ERPs) experiment was conducted on 21 native Chinese speakers who read individually-presented Chinese simple sentences (NP1+VP+NP2) word-by-word for comprehension and made semantic plausibility judgments. The transitivity of the verbs was manipulated to form three types of stimuli: congruent sentences (CON), sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following a transitive verb (semantic violation, SEM), and sentences with a semantically violated NP2 following an intransitive verb (combined semantic and syntactic violation, SEM+SYN). The ERPs evoked from the target NP2 were analyzed by using the Residue Iteration Decomposition (RIDE) method to reconstruct the ERP waveform blurred by trial-to-trial variability, as well as by using the conventional ERP method based on stimulus-locked averaging. The conventional ERP analysis showed that, compared with the critical words in CON, those in SEM and SEM+SYN elicited an N400-P600 biphasic pattern. The N400 effects in both violation conditions were of similar size and distribution, but the P600 in SEM+SYN was bigger than that in SEM. Compared with the conventional ERP analysis, RIDE analysis revealed a larger N400 effect and an earlier P600 effect (in the time window of 500-800 ms instead of 570-810ms). Overall, the combination of conventional ERP analysis and the RIDE method for compensating for trial-to-trial variability confirmed the non-significant difference between SEM and SEM+SYN in the earlier N400 time window. Converging with previous findings on other Chinese structures, the current study provides further precise evidence that syntactic processing in Chinese does not occur earlier than semantic processing.

N400-like responses to three-chord harmonic sequences with unexpected out of key endings: scalp topography, cortical sources, and perspectives for a clinical use.

PubMed

Bonfiglio, Luca; Virgillito, Alessandra; Magrini, Massimo; Piarulli, Andrea; Bergamasco, Massimo; Barcaro, Umberto; Rossi, Bruno; Salvetti, Ovidio; Carboncini, Maria Chiara

2015-03-01

A series of ERP components, each provided with both a precise timing with respect to stimulation and a specific cortical localization, reflects the temporal succession of processing stages of music information. This makes the musical stimulus potentially usable to probe residual brain functions in non-communicating patients with disorders of consciousness. In an attempt to find a simple stimulation protocol that was suitable for use in a clinical setting, the purpose of this study was to verify whether a minimum-length musical stimulus, provided with a definite music-syntactic connotation, was still able to elicit musical ERPs in a group of eight healthy subjects. The stimulus was composed of the minimum number of chords necessary and sufficient to enable the subject to predict a plausible closure of the sequence (priming) and, at the same time, to provide him/her with the closing chord of the sequence (target), either congruous (probable closing) or not (improbable closing) to the tonal context. The subject's task was to discriminate and recognize the irregular targets. The components that were expected to be elicited, in this experimental situation, were ERAN, N5, P600/LPC. Conversely, in addition to these former components, we unexpectedly observed a N400-like component. To determine whether this component was a real N400, we submitted our data to a sLORETA analysis in order to identify its cortical generators. Irregular chords showed higher current densities with respect to regular ones on the right-sided medial and superior temporal gyri, superior and inferior parietal lobules, fusiform and parahippocampal gyri, and on the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex. In particular, the N400-like wave seems to share with the word-primed music-elicited N400 certain generators that are located in cortical areas BA 21/37 and BA 22. This suggests that even chord-primed chord targets can convey extra-musical meanings and that, consequently, they might be useful in

Phonological and semantic processing during comprehension in Wernicke's aphasia: An N400 and Phonological Mapping Negativity Study.

PubMed

Robson, Holly; Pilkington, Emma; Evans, Louise; DeLuca, Vincent; Keidel, James L

2017-06-01

Comprehension impairments in Wernicke's aphasia are thought to result from a combination of impaired phonological and semantic processes. However, the relationship between these cognitive processes and language comprehension has only been inferred through offline neuropsychological tasks. This study used ERPs to investigate phonological and semantic processing during online single word comprehension. EEG was recorded in a group of Wernicke's aphasia n=8 and control participants n=10 while performing a word-picture verification task. The N400 and Phonological Mapping Negativity/Phonological Mismatch Negativity (PMN) event-related potential components were investigated as an index of semantic and phonological processing, respectively. Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia displayed reduced and inconsistent N400 and PMN effects in comparison to control participants. Reduced N400 effects in the WA group were simulated in the control group by artificially degrading speech perception. Correlation analyses in the Wernicke's aphasia group found that PMN but not N400 amplitude was associated with behavioural word-picture verification performance. The results confirm impairments at both phonological and semantic stages of comprehension in Wernicke's aphasia. However, reduced N400 responses in Wernicke's aphasia are at least partially attributable to earlier phonological processing impairments. The results provide further support for the traditional model of Wernicke's aphasia which claims a causative link between phonological processing and language comprehension impairments. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Comprehending how visual context influences incremental sentence processing: insights from ERPs and picture-sentence verification

PubMed Central

Knoeferle, Pia; Urbach, Thomas P.; Kutas, Marta

2010-01-01

To re-establish picture-sentence verification – discredited possibly for its over-reliance on post-sentence response time (RT) measures - as a task for situated comprehension, we collected event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as participants read a subject-verb-object sentence, and RTs indicating whether or not the verb matched a previously depicted action. For mismatches (vs matches), speeded RTs were longer, verb N400s over centro-parietal scalp larger, and ERPs to the object noun more negative. RTs (congruence effect) correlated inversely with the centro-parietal verb N400s, and positively with the object ERP congruence effects. Verb N400s, object ERPs, and verbal working memory scores predicted more variance in RT effects (50%) than N400s alone. Thus, (1) verification processing is not all post-sentence; (2) simple priming cannot account for these results; and (3) verification tasks can inform studies of situated comprehension. PMID:20701712

Separable Processes Before, During, and After the N400 Elicited by Previously Inferred and New Information: Evidence from Time-Frequency Decompositions

PubMed Central

Steele, Vaughn R.; Bernat, Edward M.; van den Broek, Paul; Collins, Paul F.; Patrick, Christopher J.; Marsolek, Chad J.

2012-01-01

Successful comprehension during reading often requires inferring information not explicitly presented. This information is readily accessible when subsequently encountered, and a neural correlate of this is an attenuation of the N400 event-related potential (ERP). We used ERPs and time-frequency (TF) analysis to investigate neural correlates of processing inferred information after a causal coherence inference had been generated during text comprehension. Participants read short texts, some of which promoted inference generation. After each text, they performed lexical decisions to target words that were unrelated or inference-related to the preceding text. Consistent with previous findings, inference-related words elicited an attenuated N400 relative to unrelated words. TF analyses revealed unique contributions to the N400 from activity occurring at 1–6 Hz (theta) and 0–2 Hz (delta), supporting the view that multiple, sequential processes underlie the N400. PMID:23165117

Separable processes before, during, and after the N400 elicited by previously inferred and new information: evidence from time-frequency decompositions.

PubMed

Steele, Vaughn R; Bernat, Edward M; van den Broek, Paul; Collins, Paul F; Patrick, Christopher J; Marsolek, Chad J

2013-01-25

Successful comprehension during reading often requires inferring information not explicitly presented. This information is readily accessible when subsequently encountered, and a neural correlate of this is an attenuation of the N400 event-related potential (ERP). We used ERPs and time-frequency (TF) analysis to investigate neural correlates of processing inferred information after a causal coherence inference had been generated during text comprehension. Participants read short texts, some of which promoted inference generation. After each text, they performed lexical decisions to target words that were unrelated or inference-related to the preceding text. Consistent with previous findings, inference-related words elicited an attenuated N400 relative to unrelated words. TF analyses revealed unique contributions to the N400 from activity occurring at 1-6 Hz (theta) and 0-2 Hz (delta), supporting the view that multiple, sequential processes underlie the N400. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Comparative Study of Average, Linked Mastoid, and REST References for ERP Components Acquired during fMRI

PubMed Central

Yang, Ping; Fan, Chenggui; Wang, Min; Li, Ling

2017-01-01

In simultaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, average reference (AR), and digitally linked mastoid (LM) are popular re-referencing techniques in event-related potential (ERP) analyses. However, they may introduce their own physiological signals and alter the EEG/ERP outcome. A reference electrode standardization technique (REST) that calculated a reference point at infinity was proposed to solve this problem. To confirm the advantage of REST in ERP analyses of synchronous EEG-fMRI studies, we compared the reference effect of AR, LM, and REST on task-related ERP results of a working memory task during an fMRI scan. As we hypothesized, we found that the adopted reference did not change the topography map of ERP components (N1 and P300 in the present study), but it did alter the task-related effect on ERP components. LM decreased or eliminated the visual working memory (VWM) load effect on P300, and the AR distorted the distribution of VWM location-related effect at left posterior electrodes as shown in the statistical parametric scalp mapping (SPSM) of N1. ERP cortical source estimates, which are independent of the EEG reference choice, were used as the golden standard to infer the relative utility of different references on the ERP task-related effect. By comparison, REST reference provided a more integrated and reasonable result. These results were further confirmed by the results of fMRI activations and a corresponding EEG-only study. Thus, we recommend the REST, especially with a realistic head model, as the optimal reference method for ERP data analysis in simultaneous EEG-fMRI studies. PMID:28529472

A Comparative Study of Average, Linked Mastoid, and REST References for ERP Components Acquired during fMRI.

PubMed

Yang, Ping; Fan, Chenggui; Wang, Min; Li, Ling

2017-01-01

In simultaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, average reference (AR), and digitally linked mastoid (LM) are popular re-referencing techniques in event-related potential (ERP) analyses. However, they may introduce their own physiological signals and alter the EEG/ERP outcome. A reference electrode standardization technique (REST) that calculated a reference point at infinity was proposed to solve this problem. To confirm the advantage of REST in ERP analyses of synchronous EEG-fMRI studies, we compared the reference effect of AR, LM, and REST on task-related ERP results of a working memory task during an fMRI scan. As we hypothesized, we found that the adopted reference did not change the topography map of ERP components (N1 and P300 in the present study), but it did alter the task-related effect on ERP components. LM decreased or eliminated the visual working memory (VWM) load effect on P300, and the AR distorted the distribution of VWM location-related effect at left posterior electrodes as shown in the statistical parametric scalp mapping (SPSM) of N1. ERP cortical source estimates, which are independent of the EEG reference choice, were used as the golden standard to infer the relative utility of different references on the ERP task-related effect. By comparison, REST reference provided a more integrated and reasonable result. These results were further confirmed by the results of fMRI activations and a corresponding EEG-only study. Thus, we recommend the REST, especially with a realistic head model, as the optimal reference method for ERP data analysis in simultaneous EEG-fMRI studies.

Effect of Aging on ERP Components of Cognitive Control

PubMed Central

Kropotov, Juri; Ponomarev, Valery; Tereshchenko, Ekaterina P.; Müller, Andreas; Jäncke, Lutz

2016-01-01

As people age, their performance on tasks requiring cognitive control often declines. Such a decline is frequently explained as either a general or specific decline in cognitive functioning with age. In the context of hypotheses suggesting a general decline, it is often proposed that processing speed generally declines with age. A further hypothesis is that an age-related compensation mechanism is associated with a specific cognitive decline. One prominent theory is the compensation hypothesis, which proposes that deteriorated functions are compensated for by higher performing functions. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) in the context of a GO/NOGO task to examine the age-related changes observed during cognitive control in a large group of healthy subjects aged between 18 and 84 years. The main question we attempted to answer was whether we could find neurophysiological support for either a general decline in processing speed or a compensation strategy. The subjects performed a relatively demanding cued GO/NOGO task with similar omissions and reaction times across the five age groups. The ERP waves of cognitive control, such as N2, P3cue and CNV, were decomposed into latent components by means of a blind source separation method. Based on this decomposition, it was possible to more precisely delineate the different neurophysiological and psychological processes involved in cognitive control. These data support the processing speed hypothesis because the latencies of all cognitive control ERP components increased with age, by 8 ms per decade for the early components (<200 ms) and by 20 ms per decade for the late components. At the same time, the compensatory hypothesis of aging was also supported, as the amplitudes of the components localized in posterior brain areas decreased with age, while those localized in the prefrontal cortical areas increased with age in order to maintain performance on this simple task at a relatively stable level

Sentence Context Prevails Over Word Association in Aphasia Patients with Spared Comprehension: Evidence from N400 Event-Related Potential

PubMed Central

Khachatryan, Elvira; De Letter, Miet; Vanhoof, Gertie; Goeleven, Ann; Van Hulle, Marc M.

2017-01-01

Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) studies on aphasia patients showed that lexical information is not lost but rather its integration into the working context is hampered. Studies have been conducted on the processing of sentence-level information (meaningful versus meaningless) and of word-level information (related versus unrelated) in aphasia patients, but we are not aware of any study that assesses the relationship between the two. In healthy subjects the processing of a single word in a sentence context has been studied using the N400 ERP. It was shown that, even when there is only a weak expectation of a final word in a sentence, this expectation will dominate word relatedness. In order to study the effect of semantic relatedness between words in sentence processing in aphasia patients, we conducted a crossed-design ERP study, crossing the factors of word relatedness and sentence congruity. We tested aphasia patients with mild to minimum comprehension deficit and healthy young and older (age-matched with our patients) controls on a semantic anomaly judgment task when simultaneously recording EEG. Our results show that our aphasia patient’s N400 amplitudes in response to the sentences of our crossed-design study were similar to those of our age-matched healthy subjects. However, we detected an increase in the N400 ERP latency in those patients, indicating a delay in the integration of the new word into the working context. Additionally, we observed a positive correlation between comprehension level of those patients and N400 effect in response to meaningful sentences without word relatedness contrasted to meaningless sentences without word relatedness. PMID:28119590

A novel BCI based on ERP components sensitive to configural processing of human faces.

PubMed

Zhang, Yu; Zhao, Qibin; Jin, Jing; Wang, Xingyu; Cichocki, Andrzej

2012-04-01

This study introduces a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) based on an oddball paradigm using stimuli of facial images with loss of configural face information (e.g., inversion of face). To the best of our knowledge, till now the configural processing of human faces has not been applied to BCI but widely studied in cognitive neuroscience research. Our experiments confirm that the face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP) components N170 and vertex positive potential (VPP) have reflected early structural encoding of faces and can be modulated by the configural processing of faces. With the proposed novel paradigm, we investigate the effects of ERP components N170, VPP and P300 on target detection for BCI. An eight-class BCI platform is developed to analyze ERPs and evaluate the target detection performance using linear discriminant analysis without complicated feature extraction processing. The online classification accuracy of 88.7% and information transfer rate of 38.7 bits min(-1) using stimuli of inverted faces with only single trial suggest that the proposed paradigm based on the configural processing of faces is very promising for visual stimuli-driven BCI applications.

A novel BCI based on ERP components sensitive to configural processing of human faces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yu; Zhao, Qibin; Jing, Jin; Wang, Xingyu; Cichocki, Andrzej

2012-04-01

This study introduces a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) based on an oddball paradigm using stimuli of facial images with loss of configural face information (e.g., inversion of face). To the best of our knowledge, till now the configural processing of human faces has not been applied to BCI but widely studied in cognitive neuroscience research. Our experiments confirm that the face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP) components N170 and vertex positive potential (VPP) have reflected early structural encoding of faces and can be modulated by the configural processing of faces. With the proposed novel paradigm, we investigate the effects of ERP components N170, VPP and P300 on target detection for BCI. An eight-class BCI platform is developed to analyze ERPs and evaluate the target detection performance using linear discriminant analysis without complicated feature extraction processing. The online classification accuracy of 88.7% and information transfer rate of 38.7 bits min-1 using stimuli of inverted faces with only single trial suggest that the proposed paradigm based on the configural processing of faces is very promising for visual stimuli-driven BCI applications.

Testing asymmetries in noncognate translation priming: Evidence from RTs and ERPs

PubMed Central

SCHOONBAERT, SOFIE; HOLCOMB, PHILLIP J.; GRAINGER, JONATHAN; HARTSUIKER, ROBERT J.

2012-01-01

In this study, English–French bilinguals performed a lexical decision task while reaction times (RTs) and event related potentials (ERPs) were measured to L2 targets, preceded by noncognate L1 translation primes versus L1 unrelated primes (Experiment 1a) and vice versa (Experiment 1b). The prime–target stimulus onset asynchrony was 120 ms. Significant masked translation priming was observed, indicated by faster reaction times and a decreased N400 for translation pairs as opposed to unrelated pairs, both from L1 to L2 (Experiment 1a) and from L2 to L1 (Experiment 1b), with the latter effect being weaker (RTs) and less longer lasting (ERPs). A translation priming effect was also found in the N250 ERP component, and this effect was stronger and earlier in the L2 to L1 priming direction than the reverse. The results are discussed with respect to possible mechanisms at the basis of asymmetric translation priming effects in bilinguals. PMID:20557483

N400 as an index of uncontrolled categorization processing in brand extension.

PubMed

Wang, Xiaoyi; Ma, Qingguo; Wang, Cuicui

2012-09-06

This study examined the ERP (event-related potential) correlates of categorization processing in brand extension with irrelative task. Participants faced two sequential stimuli in a pair consisting of a soft drink brand name (S1) and a product name (S2) which comprised two categories: beverage (typical product of the brand, e.g. Coke branded soda water) and clothing (atypical product of the brand, even though sometimes it was seen in the real market, e.g. Coke branded sport wear). The N400 was recorded and more largely distributed in frontal, frontal-central and central areas when S2 was clothing compared with beverage. The study did not require the participants to evaluate that the brand extension was appropriate or not, the N400 recorded here was, therefore, irrelative to the task difficulty and the conscious categorization process. We speculated that it reflected an integration processing related with the mental category. The brand performed the role of prime which aroused the participants' association of the brand-related typical products and attributes retrieving from their long term memory. The product name activated an unconscious processing of comparison between the brand and the product. In this process, the participant treated the brand as a mental category and classified the product as a member of it. There would be a large cognitive reaction which elicited the N400 if the product's attributes were atypical to the category of the brand. These findings might help us understand the N400 component in unconscious mental categorization and supported the categorization hypotheses in brand extension theory which was crucial in consumer psychology. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The t-CWT: a new ERP detection and quantification method based on the continuous wavelet transform and Student's t-statistics.

PubMed

Bostanov, Vladimir; Kotchoubey, Boris

2006-12-01

This study was aimed at developing a method for extraction and assessment of event-related brain potentials (ERP) from single-trials. This method should be applicable in the assessment of single persons' ERPs and should be able to handle both single ERP components and whole waveforms. We adopted a recently developed ERP feature extraction method, the t-CWT, for the purposes of hypothesis testing in the statistical assessment of ERPs. The t-CWT is based on the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and Student's t-statistics. The method was tested in two ERP paradigms, oddball and semantic priming, by assessing individual-participant data on a single-trial basis, and testing the significance of selected ERP components, P300 and N400, as well as of whole ERP waveforms. The t-CWT was also compared to other univariate and multivariate ERP assessment methods: peak picking, area computation, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and principal component analysis (PCA). The t-CWT produced better results than all of the other assessment methods it was compared with. The t-CWT can be used as a reliable and powerful method for ERP-component detection and testing of statistical hypotheses concerning both single ERP components and whole waveforms extracted from either single persons' or group data. The t-CWT is the first such method based explicitly on the criteria of maximal statistical difference between two average ERPs in the time-frequency domain and is particularly suitable for ERP assessment of individual data (e.g. in clinical settings), but also for the investigation of small and/or novel ERP effects from group data.

Isolating N400 as neural marker of vocal anger processing in 6-11-year old children.

PubMed

Chronaki, Georgia; Broyd, Samantha; Garner, Matthew; Hadwin, Julie A; Thompson, Margaret J J; Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J S

2012-04-01

Vocal anger is a salient social signal serving adaptive functions in typical child development. Despite recent advances in the developmental neuroscience of emotion processing with regard to visual stimuli, little remains known about the neural correlates of vocal anger processing in childhood. This study represents the first attempt to isolate a neural marker of vocal anger processing in children using electrophysiological methods. We compared ERP wave forms during the processing of non-word emotional vocal stimuli in a population sample of 55 6-11-year-old typically developing children. Children listened to three types of stimuli expressing angry, happy, and neutral prosody and completed an emotion identification task with three response options (angry, happy and neutral/'ok'). A distinctive N400 component which was modulated by emotional content of vocal stimulus was observed in children over parietal and occipital scalp regions-amplitudes were significantly attenuated to angry compared to happy and neutral voices. Findings of the present study regarding the N400 are compatible with adult studies showing reduced N400 amplitudes to negative compared to neutral emotional stimuli. Implications for studies of the neural basis of vocal anger processing in children are discussed. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Differential effects of emotional cues on components of prospective memory: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Cona, Giorgia; Kliegel, Matthias; Bisiacchi, Patrizia S.

2015-01-01

So far, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with emotion effects on prospective memory (PM) performance. Thus, this study aimed at disentangling possible mechanisms for the effects of emotional valence of PM cues on the distinct phases composing PM by investigating event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were engaged in an ongoing N-back task while being required to perform a PM task. The emotional valence of both the ongoing pictures and the PM cues was manipulated (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant). ERPs were recorded during the PM phases, such as encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of the intention. A recognition task including PM cues and ongoing stimuli was also performed at the end of the sessions. ERP results suggest that emotional PM cues not only trigger an automatic, bottom-up, capture of attention, but also boost a greater allocation of top-down processes. These processes seem to be recruited to hold attention toward the emotional stimuli and to retrieve the intention from memory, likely because of the motivational significance of the emotional stimuli. Moreover, pleasant PM cues seemed to modulate especially the prospective component, as revealed by changes in the amplitude of the ERP correlates of strategic monitoring as a function of the relevance of the valence for the PM task. Unpleasant pictures seemed to modulate especially the retrospective component, as revealed by the largest old/new effect being elicited by unpleasant PM pictures in the recognition task. PMID:25674061

The Impact of Deliberative Strategy Dissociates ERP Components Related to Conflict Processing vs. Reinforcement Learning

PubMed Central

Warren, Christopher M.; Holroyd, Clay B.

2012-01-01

We applied the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique to investigate the involvement of two neuromodulatory systems in learning and decision making: The locus coeruleus–norepinephrine system (NE system) and the mesencephalic dopamine system (DA system). We have previously presented evidence that the N2, a negative deflection in the ERP elicited by task-relevant events that begins approximately 200 ms after onset of the eliciting stimulus and that is sensitive to low-probability events, is a manifestation of cortex-wide noradrenergic modulation recruited to facilitate the processing of unexpected stimuli. Further, we hold that the impact of DA reinforcement learning signals on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) produces a component of the ERP called the feedback-related negativity (FRN). The N2 and the FRN share a similar time range, a similar topography, and similar antecedent conditions. We varied factors related to the degree of cognitive deliberation across a series of experiments to dissociate these two ERP components. Across four experiments we varied the demand for a deliberative strategy, from passively watching feedback, to more complex/challenging decision tasks. Consistent with our predictions, the FRN was largest in the experiment involving active learning and smallest in the experiment involving passive learning whereas the N2 exhibited the opposite effect. Within each experiment, when subjects attended to color, the N2 was maximal at frontal–central sites, and when they attended to gender it was maximal over lateral-occipital areas, whereas the topology of the FRN was frontal–central in both task conditions. We conclude that both the DA system and the NE system act in concert when learning from rewards that vary in expectedness, but that the DA system is relatively more exercised when subjects are relatively more engaged by the learning task. PMID:22493568

Prosodic expectations in silent reading: ERP evidence from rhyme scheme and semantic congruence in classic Chinese poems.

PubMed

Chen, Qingrong; Zhang, Jingjing; Xu, Xiaodong; Scheepers, Christoph; Yang, Yiming; Tanenhaus, Michael K

2016-09-01

In an ERP study, classic Chinese poems with a well-known rhyme scheme were used to generate an expectation of a rhyme in the absence of an expectation for a specific character. Critical characters were either consistent or inconsistent with the expected rhyme scheme and semantically congruent or incongruent with the content of the poem. These stimuli allowed us to examine whether a top-down rhyme scheme expectation would affect relatively early components of the ERP associated with character-to-sound mapping (P200) and lexically-mediated semantic processing (N400). The ERP data revealed that rhyme scheme congruence, but not semantic congruence modulated the P200: rhyme-incongruent characters elicited a P200 effect across the head demonstrating that top-down expectations influence early phonological coding of the character before lexical-semantic processing. Rhyme scheme incongruence also produced a right-lateralized N400-like effect. Moreover, compared to semantically congruous poems, semantically incongruous poems produced a larger N400 response only when the character was consistent with the expected rhyme scheme. The results suggest that top-down prosodic expectations can modulate early phonological processing in visual word recognition, indicating that prosodic expectations might play an important role in silent reading. They also suggest that semantic processing is influenced by general knowledge of text genre. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Left centro-parieto-temporal response to tool-gesture incongruity: an ERP study.

PubMed

Chang, Yi-Tzu; Chen, Hsiang-Yu; Huang, Yuan-Chieh; Shih, Wan-Yu; Chan, Hsiao-Lung; Wu, Ping-Yi; Meng, Ling-Fu; Chen, Chen-Chi; Wang, Ching-I

2018-03-13

Action semantics have been investigated in relation to context violation but remain less examined in relation to the meaning of gestures. In the present study, we examined tool-gesture incongruity by event-related potentials (ERPs) and hypothesized that the component N400, a neural index which has been widely used in both linguistic and action semantic congruence, is significant for conditions of incongruence. Twenty participants performed a tool-gesture judgment task, in which they were asked to judge whether the tool-gesture pairs were correct or incorrect, for the purpose of conveying functional expression of the tools. Online electroencephalograms and behavioral performances (the accuracy rate and reaction time) were recorded. The ERP analysis showed a left centro-parieto-temporal N300 effect (220-360 ms) for the correct condition. However, the expected N400 (400-550 ms) could not be differentiated between correct/incorrect conditions. After 700 ms, a prominent late negative complex for the correct condition was also found in the left centro-parieto-temporal area. The neurophysiological findings indicated that the left centro-parieto-temporal area is the predominant region contributing to neural processing for tool-gesture incongruity in right-handers. The temporal dynamics of tool-gesture incongruity are: (1) firstly enhanced for recognizable tool-gesture using patterns, (2) and require a secondary reanalysis for further examination of the highly complicated visual structures of gestures and tools. The evidence from the tool-gesture incongruity indicated altered brain activities attributable to the N400 in relation to lexical and action semantics. The online interaction between gesture and tool processing provided minimal context violation or anticipation effect, which may explain the missing N400.

The role of literal meaning in figurative language comprehension: evidence from masked priming ERP

PubMed Central

Weiland, Hanna; Bambini, Valentina; Schumacher, Petra B.

2014-01-01

The role of literal meaning during the construction of meaning that goes beyond pure literal composition was investigated by combining cross-modal masked priming and ERPs. This experimental design was chosen to compare two conflicting theoretical positions on this topic. The indirect access account claims that literal aspects are processed first, and additional meaning components are computed only if no satisfactory interpretation is reached. In contrast, the direct access approach argues that figurative aspects can be accessed immediately. We presented metaphors (These lawyers are hyenas, Experiment 1a and 1b) and producer-for-product metonymies (The boy read Böll, Experiment 2a and 2b) with and without a prime word that was semantically relevant to the literal meaning of the target word (furry and talented, respectively). In the presentation without priming, metaphors revealed a biphasic N400-Late Positivity pattern, while metonymies showed an N400 only. We interpret the findings within a two-phase language architecture where contextual expectations guide initial access (N400) and precede pragmatic adjustment resulting in reconceptualization (Late Positivity). With masked priming, the N400-difference was reduced for metaphors and vanished for metonymies. This speaks against the direct access view that predicts a facilitating effect for the literal condition only and hence would predict the N400-difference to increase. The results are more consistent with indirect access accounts that argue for facilitation effects for both conditions and consequently for consistent or even smaller N400-amplitude differences. This combined masked priming ERP paradigm therefore yields new insights into the role of literal meaning in the online composition of figurative language. PMID:25136309

Are cholinergic enhancers beneficial for memory in schizophrenia? An event-related potentials (ERPs) study of rivastigmine add-on therapy in a crossover trial.

PubMed

Guillem, Francois; Chouinard, Sylvie; Poulin, Julie; Godbout, Roger; Lalonde, Pierre; Melun, Pierre; Bentaleb, Lahcen Ait; Stip, Emmanuel

2006-07-01

Studies have reported beneficial effects of cholinergic enhancers, e.g., rivastigmine, on memory in schizophrenia but others have not. Possibly, these discrepancies are related to the lack of specificity of the tests used. This study investigated the effect of rivastigmine on memory in schizophrenia using event-related potentials (ERPs). Eighteen patients treated with atypical antipsychotic received rivastigmine adjuvant therapy in a randomized, crossover design. They were assessed at baseline (T1) and on two subsequent occasions (T2 and T3), where one half of the subjects were taken rivastigmine and the other half not. ERPs were recorded during a recognition memory task on each session. Behavioral and ERP data were analyzed using mixed ANOVA models first at T1 to detect potential group differences and for the trial (T1-T2) to determine the influence of rivastigmine, i.e., sessionxgroup interactions. The results showed no group difference at T1 except a trend for one group to be less efficient than the other on RT measures. When controlling for this difference the results on the trial data showed a trend for a benefit of rivastigmine on the RT memory effect. ERP analysis revealed that rivastigmine affects the amplitudes of two components elicited within 150-300 ms over posterior (reduced N2b) and frontal sites (enhanced P2a). It also enhances the magnitude of the memory (old/new) effect on two later components over posterior (N400) and frontal sites (F-N400). These results suggest that rivastigmine improves selective attention by enhancing interference inhibition processes (P2a) and lowering the reactivity to incoming stimulus (N2b). It also improves the integration of information with knowledge (N400) and with its context (F-N400). Generally, this study showed that the beneficial effect of rivastigmine on memory is not unitary but rather comes from its action at different time points within information processing cascade.

Morphosyntax can modulate the N400 component: Event related potentials to gender-marked post-nominal adjectives

PubMed Central

Guajardo, Lourdes F.; Wicha, Nicole Y. Y.

2014-01-01

Event-related potential studies of grammatical gender agreement often report a left anterior negativity (LAN) when agreement violations occur. Some studies have shown that during sentence comprehension gender violations can also interact with semantic processing to modulate a negativity associated with processing meaning – the N400. Given that the LAN and N400 overlap in time, they are identified by their scalp distributions and purported functional roles. Critically, grammatical gender violations also elicit a right posterior positivity that can overlap temporally with and potentially affect the scalp distribution of the LAN/N400. We measured the effect of grammatical gender violations in the LAN/N400 window and late positive component (LPC) during comprehension of Spanish sentences. A post-nominal adjective could either make sense or not, and either agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. We observed a negativity to gender agreement violations in the LAN/N400 window (300–500 ms post stimulus onset) that was smaller than the semantic-congruity N400, but overlapped with it in time and distribution. The early portion of the LPC to gender violations was modulated by sentence constraint, occurring as early as 450ms in highly constraining sentences. A subadditive interaction occurred at the later portion of the LPC with equivalent effects for single and double violations (gender and semantics), reflecting a general stage of reprocessing. Overall, our data support models of language comprehension whereby both semantic and morphosyntactic information can affect processing at similar time points. PMID:24462934

Morphosyntax can modulate the N400 component: event related potentials to gender-marked post-nominal adjectives.

PubMed

Guajardo, Lourdes F; Wicha, Nicole Y Y

2014-05-01

Event-related potential studies of grammatical gender agreement often report a left anterior negativity (LAN) when agreement violations occur. Some studies have shown that during sentence comprehension gender violations can also interact with semantic processing to modulate a negativity associated with processing meaning - the N400. Given that the LAN and N400 overlap in time, they are identified by their scalp distributions and purported functional roles. Critically, grammatical gender violations also elicit a right posterior positivity that can overlap temporally and potentially affect the scalp distribution of the LAN/N400. We measured the effect of grammatical gender violations in the LAN/N400 window and late positive component (LPC) during comprehension of Spanish sentences. A post-nominal adjective could either make sense or not, and either agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. We observed a negativity to gender agreement violations in the LAN/N400 window (300-500ms post stimulus onset) that was smaller than the semantic-congruity N400, but overlapped with it in time and distribution. The early portion of the LPC to gender violations was modulated by sentence constraint, occurring as early as 450ms in highly constraining sentences. A subadditive interaction occurred at the later portion of the LPC with equivalent effects for single and double violations (gender and semantics), reflecting a general stage of reprocessing. Overall, our data support models of language comprehension whereby both semantic and morphosyntactic information can affect processing at similar time points. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults

PubMed Central

Qi, Zhenghan; Beach, Sara D.; Finn, Amy S.; Minas, Jennifer; Goetz, Calvin; Chan, Brian; Gabrieli, John D.E.

2018-01-01

Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual’s native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiology during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information. PMID:27737775

Predictability effect on N400 reflects the severity of reading comprehension deficits in aphasia.

PubMed

Chang, Chih-Ting; Lee, Chia-Ying; Chou, Chia-Ju; Fuh, Jong-Ling; Wu, Hsin-Chi

2016-01-29

Predictability effect on N400, in which low predictability words elicited a larger N400 than high predictability words did over central to posterior electrodes, has been used to index difficulty of lexical retrieval and semantic integration of words in sentence comprehension. This study examined predictability effect on N400 in aphasic patients to determine if the properties of N400 are suited to indexing the severity of reading comprehension deficits. Patients with aphasia were divided into high and low ability groups based on scores on the reading comprehension subtest in the Chinese Concise Aphasia Test (CCAT). The two aphasia groups, a group of healthy elders who were age-matched to the aphasic participants, and a group of young adults, were requested to read sentences that either ended with highly predictable words or unexpected but plausible words, while undergoing electroencephalography (EEG). The young adult and healthy elderly groups exhibited the typical centro-parietal distributed effect of predictability on N400; however, healthy elders exhibited a reduced N400 effect in a delayed time window compared to the young adults. Compared with the elderly control, the high ability aphasia group exhibited a comparable N400 effect in a more restricted time window; by contrast, the low ability aphasia group exhibited a frontal distributed N400 in a much later time window (400-700 ms). These data suggest that the severity of reading comprehension deficits affects predictability effect on a set of N400 characteristics (i.e., amplitude, time window, and topographic distribution), which may be effective as ERP signatures in the evaluation of language recovery in aphasia. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Orthographic and phonological processing in developing readers revealed by ERPs

PubMed Central

EDDY, MARIANNA D.; GRAINGER, JONATHAN; HOLCOMB, PHILLIP J.; GABRIELI, JOHN D. E.

2018-01-01

The development of neurocognitive mechanisms in single word reading was studied in children ages 8–10 years using ERPs combined with priming manipulations aimed at dissociating orthographic and phonological processes. Transposed-letter (TL) priming (barin–BRAIN vs. bosin–BRAIN) was used to assess orthographic processing, and pseudohomophone (PH) priming (brane–BRAIN vs. brant–BRAIN) was used to assess phonological processing. Children showed TL and PH priming effects on both the N250 and N400 ERP components, and the magnitude of TL priming correlated positively with reading ability, with better readers showing larger TL priming effects. Phonological priming, on the other hand, did not correlate with reading ability. The positive correlations between TL priming and reading ability in children points to a key role for flexible sublexical orthographic representations in reading development, in line with their hypothesized role in the efficient mapping of orthographic information onto semantic information in skilled readers. PMID:27671210

ERP correlates of letter identity and letter position are modulated by lexical frequency

PubMed Central

Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Perea, Manuel; Gómez, Pablo; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2013-01-01

The encoding of letter position is a key aspect in all recently proposed models of visual-word recognition. We analyzed the impact of lexical frequency on letter position assignment by examining the temporal dynamics of lexical activation induced by pseudowords extracted from words of different frequencies. For each word (e.g., BRIDGE), we created two pseudowords: A transposed-letter (TL: BRIGDE) and a replaced-letter pseudoword (RL: BRITGE). ERPs were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in two tasks: Semantic categorization (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2). For high-frequency stimuli, similar ERPs were obtained for words and TL-pseudowords, but the N400 component to words was reduced relative to RL-pseudowords, indicating less lexical/semantic activation. In contrast, TL- and RL-pseudowords created from low-frequency stimuli elicited similar ERPs. Behavioral responses in the lexical decision task paralleled this asymmetry. The present findings impose constraints on computational and neural models of visual-word recognition. PMID:23454070

ERP to chess stimuli reveal expert-novice differences in the amplitudes of N2 and P3 components.

PubMed

Wright, Michael J; Gobet, Fernand; Chassy, Philippe; Ramchandani, Payal Nanik

2013-10-01

ERP experiments were conducted to analyze the underlying neural events when chess players make simple judgments of a board position. Fourteen expert players and 14 age-matched novices viewed, for each of four tasks, 128 unique positions on a mini (4 × 4) chess board each presented for 0.5 s. The tasks were to respond: (a) if white king was in check, (b) if black knight was present, (c) if white king was not in check, and (d) if no black knight was present. Experts showed an enhanced N2 with check targets and a larger P3 with knight targets, relative to novices. Expert-novice differences in posterior N2 began as early as 240 ms on check-related searches. Results were consistent with the view that prolonged N2 components reflect matching of current perceptual input to memory, and thus are sensitive to experts' superior pattern recognition and memory retrieval of chunks. Copyright © 2013 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Native-language N400 and P600 predict dissociable language-learning abilities in adults.

PubMed

Qi, Zhenghan; Beach, Sara D; Finn, Amy S; Minas, Jennifer; Goetz, Calvin; Chan, Brian; Gabrieli, John D E

2017-04-01

Language learning aptitude during adulthood varies markedly across individuals. An individual's native-language ability has been associated with success in learning a new language as an adult. However, little is known about how native-language processing affects learning success and what neural markers of native-language processing, if any, are related to success in learning. We therefore related variation in electrophysiology during native-language processing to success in learning a novel artificial language. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while native English speakers judged the acceptability of English sentences prior to learning an artificial language. There was a trend towards a double dissociation between native-language ERPs and their relationships to novel syntax and vocabulary learning. Individuals who exhibited a greater N400 effect when processing English semantics showed better future learning of the artificial language overall. The N400 effect was related to syntax learning via its specific relationship to vocabulary learning. In contrast, the P600 effect size when processing English syntax predicted future syntax learning but not vocabulary learning. These findings show that distinct neural signatures of native-language processing relate to dissociable abilities for learning novel semantic and syntactic information. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in verbal working memory underlie a tradeoff between semantic and structural processing difficulty during language comprehension: An ERP investigation.

PubMed

Kim, Albert E; Oines, Leif; Miyake, Akira

2018-03-01

This study investigated the processes reflected in the widely observed N400 and P600 event-related potential (ERP) effects and tested the hypothesis that the N400 and P600 effects are functionally linked in a tradeoff relationship, constrained in part by individual differences in cognitive ability. Sixty participants read sentences, and ERP effects of semantic anomaly, relative to plausible words, were calculated for each participant. Results suggested qualitatively different ERP patterns across participants: Some individuals generated N400-dominated effects, whereas others generated P600-dominated effects, for the same stimuli. To specify the sources of individual differences in brain responses, we also derived aggregate scores for verbal working memory (WM), nonverbal WM, and language experience/knowledge, based on 6 behavioral measures administered to each participant. Multiple regression analysis pitting these 3 constructs against each other showed that a larger verbal WM capacity was significantly associated with larger P600 and smaller N400 effect amplitudes across individuals, whereas the other constructs did not predict the ERP effects. The results suggest that N400 and P600 brain responses, which may be attributable to semantic integration difficulty and structural processing, respectively, vie for expression when comprehenders encounter semantically unexpected words and that which option wins out is constrained in part by each comprehender's verbal WM capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Neurocognitive Deficits in Male Alcoholics: An ERP/sLORETA Analysis of the N2 Component in an Equal Probability Go/NoGo Task

PubMed Central

Pandey, AK; Kamarajan, C; Tang, Y; Chorlian, DB; Roopesh, BN; Manz, N; Stimus, A; Rangaswamy, M; Porjesz, B

2011-01-01

In alcoholism research, studies concerning time-locked electrophysiological aspects of response inhibition have concentrated mainly on the P3 component of the event-related potential (ERP). The objective of the present study was to investigate the N2 component of the ERP to elucidate possible brain dysfunction related to the motor response and its inhibition using a Go/NoGo task in alcoholics. The sample consisted of 78 abstinent alcoholic males and 58 healthy male controls. The N2 peak was compared across group and task conditions. Alcoholics showed significantly reduced N2 peak amplitudes compared to normal controls for Go as well as NoGo task conditions. Control subjects showed significantly larger NoGo than Go N2 amplitudes at frontal regions, whereas alcoholics did not show any differences between task conditions at frontal regions. Standardized Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography Analysis (sLORETA) indicated that alcoholics had significantly lower current density at the source than control subjects for the NoGo condition at bilateral anterior prefrontal regions, whereas the differences between groups during the Go trials was not statistically significant. Furthermore, NoGo current density across both groups revealed significantly more activation in bilateral anterior cingulate cortical (ACC) areas, with the maximum activation in the right cingulate regions. However, the magnitude of this difference was much less in alcoholics compared to control subjects. These findings suggest that alcoholics may have deficits in effortful processing during the motor response and its inhibition, suggestive of possible frontal lobe dysfunction. PMID:22024409

Word and pseudoword superiority effects reflected in the ERP waveform

PubMed Central

Coch, Donna; Mitra, Priya

2010-01-01

A variant of the Reicher-Wheeler task was used to determine when in the event-related potential (ERP) waveform indices of word and pseudoword superiority effects might be present, and whether ERP measures of superiority effects correlated with standardized behavioral measures of orthographic fluency and single word reading. ERPs were recorded to briefly presented, masked letter strings that included real words (DARK/PARK), pseudowords (DARL/PARL), nonwords (RDKA/RPKA), and letter-in-xs (DXXX, PXXX) stimuli. Participants decided which of two letters occurred at a given position in the string (here, forced-choice alternatives D and P). Behaviorally, both word (more accurate choices for letters in words than in baseline nonwords or letter-in-xs) and pseudoword (more accurate choices for letters in pseudowords than in baseline conditions) superiority effects were observed. Electrophysiologically, effects of orthographic regularity and familiarity were apparent as early as the P150 time window (100–160 ms), an effect of lexicality was observed as early as the N200 time window (160–200 ms), and peak amplitude of the N300 and N400 also differentiated word and pseudoword as compared to baseline stimuli. Further, the size of the P150 and N400 ERP word superiority effects was related to standardized behavioral measures of fluency and reading. Results suggest that orthographic fluency is reflected in both lower-level, sublexical, perceptual processing and higher-level, lexical processing in fluently reading adults. PMID:20211607

Distinguishing Neurocognitive Processes Reflected by P600 Effects: Evidence from ERPs and Neural Oscillations

PubMed Central

Regel, Stefanie; Meyer, Lars; Gunter, Thomas C.

2014-01-01

Research on language comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs) reported distinct ERP components reliably related to the processing of semantic (N400) and syntactic information (P600). Recent ERP studies have challenged this well-defined distinction by showing P600 effects for semantic and pragmatic anomalies. So far, it is still unresolved whether the P600 reflects specific or rather common processes. The present study addresses this question by investigating ERPs in response to a syntactic and pragmatic (irony) manipulation, as well as a combined syntactic and pragmatic manipulation. For the syntactic condition, a morphosyntactic violation was applied, whereas for the pragmatic condition, such as “That is rich”, either an ironic or literal interpretation was achieved, depending on the prior context. The ERPs at the critical word showed a LAN-P600 pattern for syntactically incorrect sentences relative to correct ones. For ironic compared to literal sentences, ERPs showed a P200 effect followed by a P600 component. In comparison of the syntax-related P600 to the irony-related P600, distributional differences were found. Moreover, for the P600 time window (i.e., 500–900 ms), different changes in theta power between the syntax and pragmatics effects were found, suggesting that different patterns of neural activity contributed to each respective effect. Thus, both late positivities seem to be differently sensitive to these two types of linguistic information, and might reflect distinct neurocognitive processes, such as reanalysis of the sentence structure versus pragmatic reanalysis. PMID:24844290

Establishing causal coherence across sentences: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Kuperberg, Gina R.; Paczynski, Martin; Ditman, Tali

2011-01-01

This study examined neural activity associated with establishing causal relationships across sentences during online comprehension. ERPs were measured while participants read and judged the relatedness of three-sentence scenarios in which the final sentence was highly causally related, intermediately related and causally unrelated to its context. Lexico-semantic co-occurrence was matched across the three conditions using a Latent Semantic Analysis. Critical words in causally unrelated scenarios evoked a larger N400 than words in both highly causally related and intermediately related scenarios, regardless of whether they appeared before or at the sentence-final position. At midline sites, the N400 to intermediately related sentence-final words was attenuated to the same degree as to highly causally related words, but otherwise the N400 to intermediately related words fell in between that evoked by highly causally related and intermediately related words. No modulation of the Late Positivity/P600 component was observed across conditions. These results indicate that both simple and complex causal inferences can influence the earliest stages of semantically processing an incoming word. Further, they suggest that causal coherence, at the situation level, can influence incremental word-by-word discourse comprehension, even when semantic relationships between individual words are matched. PMID:20175676

The Time-Course of Sentence Meaning Composition. N400 Effects of the Interaction between Context-Induced and Lexically Stored Affordances

PubMed Central

Cosentino, Erica; Baggio, Giosuè; Kontinen, Jarmo; Werning, Markus

2017-01-01

Contemporary semantic theories can be classified along two dimensions: (i) the way and time-course in which contextual factors influence sentence truth-conditions; and (ii) whether and to what extent comprehension involves sensory, motor and emotional processes. In order to explore this theoretical space, our ERP study investigates the time-course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic component of a noun (the function of the object to which the noun refers to, e.g., a funnel is generally used to pour liquids into containers) and an ad-hoc affordance contextually induced by the situation described in the discourse. We found that, if preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb incongruent with the noun's telic component as in “She uses the funnel to hang her coat” elicited an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb as in “She uses the funnel to pour water into a container.” However, if the situation introduced in the preceding discourse induced a new function for the object as an ad-hoc affordance (e.g., the funnel is glued to the wall and the agent wants to hang the coat), we observed a crossing-over regarding the direction of the N400 effect: comparing the ad-hoc affordance-inducing context with the neutral context, the N400 for the incongruent verb was significantly reduced, whereas the N400 for the congruent verb was significantly enhanced. We explain these results as a consequence of the incorporation of the contextually triggered ad-hoc affordance into the meaning of the noun. Combining these results with an analysis of semantic similarity values between test sentences and contexts, we argue that one possibility is that the incorporation of an ad-hoc affordance may be explained on the basis of the mental simulation of concurrent motor information. PMID:28603506

The Time-Course of Sentence Meaning Composition. N400 Effects of the Interaction between Context-Induced and Lexically Stored Affordances.

PubMed

Cosentino, Erica; Baggio, Giosuè; Kontinen, Jarmo; Werning, Markus

2017-01-01

Contemporary semantic theories can be classified along two dimensions: (i) the way and time-course in which contextual factors influence sentence truth-conditions; and (ii) whether and to what extent comprehension involves sensory, motor and emotional processes. In order to explore this theoretical space, our ERP study investigates the time-course of the interaction between the lexically specified telic component of a noun (the function of the object to which the noun refers to, e.g., a funnel is generally used to pour liquids into containers) and an ad-hoc affordance contextually induced by the situation described in the discourse. We found that, if preceded by a neutral discourse context, a verb incongruent with the noun's telic component as in "She uses the funnel to hang her coat" elicited an enhanced N400 compared to a congruent verb as in "She uses the funnel to pour water into a container." However, if the situation introduced in the preceding discourse induced a new function for the object as an ad-hoc affordance (e.g., the funnel is glued to the wall and the agent wants to hang the coat), we observed a crossing-over regarding the direction of the N400 effect: comparing the ad-hoc affordance-inducing context with the neutral context, the N400 for the incongruent verb was significantly reduced, whereas the N400 for the congruent verb was significantly enhanced. We explain these results as a consequence of the incorporation of the contextually triggered ad-hoc affordance into the meaning of the noun. Combining these results with an analysis of semantic similarity values between test sentences and contexts, we argue that one possibility is that the incorporation of an ad-hoc affordance may be explained on the basis of the mental simulation of concurrent motor information.

Effects of cooperating and conflicting prosody in spoken English garden path sentences: ERP evidence for the boundary deletion hypothesis.

PubMed

Pauker, Efrat; Itzhak, Inbal; Baum, Shari R; Steinhauer, Karsten

2011-10-01

In reading, a comma in the wrong place can cause more severe misunderstandings than the lack of a required comma. Here, we used ERPs to demonstrate that a similar effect holds for prosodic boundaries in spoken language. Participants judged the acceptability of temporarily ambiguous English "garden path" sentences whose prosodic boundaries were either in line or in conflict with the actual syntactic structure. Sentences with incongruent boundaries were accepted less than those with missing boundaries and elicited a stronger on-line brain response in ERPs (N400/P600 components). Our results support the notion that mentally deleting an overt prosodic boundary is more costly than postulating a new one and extend previous findings, suggesting an immediate role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Importantly, our study also provides new details on the profile and temporal dynamics of the closure positive shift (CPS), an ERP component assumed to reflect prosodic phrasing in speech and music in real time. We show that the CPS is reliably elicited at the onset of prosodic boundaries in English sentences and is preceded by negative components. Its early onset distinguishes the speech CPS in adults both from prosodic ERP correlates in infants and from the "music CPS" previously reported for trained musicians.

ERP Indicators of L2 Proficiency in Word-to-text Integration Processes.

PubMed

Yang, Chin Lung; Perfetti, Charles A; Tan, Li-Hai; Jiang, Ying

2018-06-04

Studies of bilingual proficiency have largely focused on word and sentence processing, whereas the text level has received relatively little attention. We examined on-line second language (L2) text comprehension in relation to L2 proficiency with ERPs recorded on critical words separated across a sentence boundary from their co-referential antecedents. The integration processes on the critical words were designed to reflect different levels of text representation: word-form, word-meaning, and situational levels (Kintsch, 1998). Across proficiency level, bilinguals showed biphasic N400/late positive component (LPC) effects related to word meaning integration (N400) and mental model updating (LPC) processes. More proficient bilinguals, compared with less proficient bilinguals, showed reduced amplitudes in both N400 and LPC when the integration depended on semantic and conceptual meanings. When the integration was based on word repetitions and inferences, both groups showed reduced N400 negativity while elevated LPC positivity. These effects reflect how memory mechanisms (processes and resources) support the tight coupling among word meaning, readers' memory of the text meaning and the referentially-specified meaning of the text. They further demonstrate the importance of L2 semantic and conceptual processing in modulating the L2 proficiency effect on L2 text integration processes. These results align with the assumption that word meaning processes are causal components in variations of comprehension ability for both monolinguals and bilinguals. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Getting ahead of yourself: Parafoveal word expectancy modulates the N400 during sentence reading

DOE PAGES

Stites, Mallory C.; Payne, Brennan R.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2017-01-18

An important question in the reading literature regards the nature of the semantic information readers can extract from the parafovea (i.e., the next word in a sentence). Recent eye-tracking findings have found a semantic parafoveal preview benefit under many circumstances, and findings from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) also suggest that readers can at least detect semantic anomalies parafoveally. We use ERPs to ask whether fine-grained aspects of semantic expectancy can affect the N400 elicited by a word appearing in the parafovea. In an RSVP-with-flankers paradigm, sentences were presented word by word, flanked 2° bilaterally by the previous and upcoming words.more » Stimuli consisted of high constraint sentences that were identical up to the target word, which could be expected, unexpected but plausible, or anomalous, as well as low constraint sentences that were always completed with the most expected ending. Findings revealed an N400 effect to the target word when it appeared in the parafovea, which was graded with respect to the target’s expectancy and congruency within the sentence context. Moreover, when targets appeared at central fixation, this graded congruency effect was mitigated, suggesting that the semantic information gleaned from parafoveal vision functionally changes the semantic processing of those words when foveated.« less

Getting ahead of yourself: Parafoveal word expectancy modulates the N400 during sentence reading

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Stites, Mallory C.; Payne, Brennan R.; Federmeier, Kara D.

An important question in the reading literature regards the nature of the semantic information readers can extract from the parafovea (i.e., the next word in a sentence). Recent eye-tracking findings have found a semantic parafoveal preview benefit under many circumstances, and findings from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) also suggest that readers can at least detect semantic anomalies parafoveally. We use ERPs to ask whether fine-grained aspects of semantic expectancy can affect the N400 elicited by a word appearing in the parafovea. In an RSVP-with-flankers paradigm, sentences were presented word by word, flanked 2° bilaterally by the previous and upcoming words.more » Stimuli consisted of high constraint sentences that were identical up to the target word, which could be expected, unexpected but plausible, or anomalous, as well as low constraint sentences that were always completed with the most expected ending. Findings revealed an N400 effect to the target word when it appeared in the parafovea, which was graded with respect to the target’s expectancy and congruency within the sentence context. Moreover, when targets appeared at central fixation, this graded congruency effect was mitigated, suggesting that the semantic information gleaned from parafoveal vision functionally changes the semantic processing of those words when foveated.« less

The effects of facial color and inversion on the N170 event-related potential (ERP) component.

PubMed

Minami, T; Nakajima, K; Changvisommid, L; Nakauchi, S

2015-12-17

Faces are important for social interaction because much can be perceived from facial details, including a person's race, age, and mood. Recent studies have shown that both configural (e.g. face shape and inversion) and surface information (e.g. surface color and reflectance properties) are important for face perception. Therefore, the present study examined the effects of facial color and inverted face properties on event-related potential (ERP) responses, particularly the N170 component. Stimuli consisted of natural and bluish-colored faces. Faces were presented in both upright and upside down orientations. An ANOVA was used to analyze N170 amplitudes and verify the effects of the main independent variables. Analysis of N170 amplitude revealed the significant interactions between stimulus orientation and color. Subsequent analysis indicated that N170 was larger for bluish-colored faces than natural-colored faces, and N170 to natural-colored faces was larger in response to inverted stimulus as compared to upright stimulus. Additionally, a multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) investigated face-processing dynamics without any prior assumptions. Results distinguished, above chance, both facial color and orientation from single-trial electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Decoding performance for color classification of inverted faces was significantly diminished as compared to an upright orientation. This suggests that processing orientation is predominant over facial color. Taken together, the present findings elucidate the temporal and spatial distribution of orientation and color processing during face processing. Copyright © 2015 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

FN400 and LPC memory effects for concrete and abstract words

PubMed Central

Stróżak, Paweł; Bird, Christopher W.; Corby, Krystin; Frishkoff, Gwen; Curran, Tim

2016-01-01

According to dual-process models, recognition memory depends on two neurocognitive mechanisms: familiarity, which has been linked to the "frontal N400" (FN400) effect in studies using event-related potentials (ERPs), and recollection, which is reflected by changes in the late positive complex (LPC). Recently, there has been some debate over the relationship between FN400 familiarity effects and N400 semantic effects. According to one view, these effects are one and the same. Proponents of this view have suggested that the frontal distribution of the FN400 could be due to stimulus concreteness: recognition memory experiments commonly use highly imageable or concrete words (or pictures), which elicit semantic ERPs with a frontal distribution. In the present study we tested this claim using a recognition memory paradigm in which subjects memorized concrete and abstract nouns; half of the words changed font color between study and test. FN400 and LPC old/new effects were observed for abstract, as well as concrete words, and were stronger over right hemisphere electrodes for concrete words. However, there was no difference in anteriority of the FN400 effect for the two word types. These findings challenge the notion that the frontal distribution of the FN400 old/new effect is fully explained by stimulus concreteness. PMID:27463978

ERP evidence for consumer evaluation of copycat brands

PubMed Central

Shang, Qian; Pei, Guanxiong; Jin, Jia; Zhang, Wuke; Wang, Yuran

2018-01-01

Copycat brands mimic brand leaders to free ride on the latter's equity. However, little is known regarding if and how consumers confuse copycat as leading brand in purchasing. In this study, we applied a word-pair evaluation paradigm in which the first word was a brand name (copycat vs. normal brand both similar with a leading brand in category), followed by a product name (near vs. far from the leading brand’s category). Behavioral results showed that, when the product is near the leader’s category, the copycat strategy (CN) was more preferred compared to the normal brand (NN) but not different in the far product condition (CF and NF). Event-related potential (ERP) data provided further insight into the mechanism. The N400 amplitude elicited by the CN condition was significantly smaller than NN. However, when products are far from the leader’s category, there was no significant difference in N400 amplitudes. For the late positive component (LPC), the CN gave rise to a larger amplitude than the CF. The N400 amplitude was suggested to reflect the categorization process, and the LPC demonstrated the recollection process in long-term memory. These findings imply that the copycat brand strategy is generally only effective when products are within the category of the leading brand, which offers important implications for marketing practices. PMID:29466469

ERP evidence for consumer evaluation of copycat brands.

PubMed

Shang, Qian; Pei, Guanxiong; Jin, Jia; Zhang, Wuke; Wang, Yuran; Wang, Xiaoyi

2018-01-01

Copycat brands mimic brand leaders to free ride on the latter's equity. However, little is known regarding if and how consumers confuse copycat as leading brand in purchasing. In this study, we applied a word-pair evaluation paradigm in which the first word was a brand name (copycat vs. normal brand both similar with a leading brand in category), followed by a product name (near vs. far from the leading brand's category). Behavioral results showed that, when the product is near the leader's category, the copycat strategy (CN) was more preferred compared to the normal brand (NN) but not different in the far product condition (CF and NF). Event-related potential (ERP) data provided further insight into the mechanism. The N400 amplitude elicited by the CN condition was significantly smaller than NN. However, when products are far from the leader's category, there was no significant difference in N400 amplitudes. For the late positive component (LPC), the CN gave rise to a larger amplitude than the CF. The N400 amplitude was suggested to reflect the categorization process, and the LPC demonstrated the recollection process in long-term memory. These findings imply that the copycat brand strategy is generally only effective when products are within the category of the leading brand, which offers important implications for marketing practices.

Differential involvement of episodic and face representations in ERP repetition effects.

PubMed

Jemel, Boutheina; Calabria, Marco; Delvenne, Jean-François; Crommelinck, Marc; Bruyer, Raymond

2003-03-03

The purpose of this study was to disentangle the contribution of episodic-perceptual from pre-existing memory representations of faces to repetition effects. ERPs were recorded to first and second presentations of same and different photos of famous and unfamiliar faces, in an incidental task where occasional non-targets had to be detected. Repetition of same and different photos of famous faces resulted in an N400 amplitude decrement. No such N400 repetition-induced attenuation was observed for unfamiliar faces. In addition, repetition of same photos of faces, and not different ones, gave rise to an early ERP repetition effect (starting at approximately 350 ms) with an occipito-temporal scalp distribution. Together, these results suggest that repetition effects depend on two temporally and may be neuro-functionally distinct loci, episode-based representation and face recognition units stored in long-term memory.

Mismatched expressions decrease face recognition and corresponding ERP old/new effects in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Guillaume, Fabrice; Guillem, François; Tiberghien, Guy; Stip, Emmanuel

2012-09-01

The objective was to investigate the electrophysiological (ERP) correlates of mismatched expression on face recognition in schizophrenia. Expression-change effects and associated ERPs were explored in patients with schizophrenia (n = 20) and paired comparison participants (n = 20) on a long-term face-recognition task. A facial-expression change decreased discriminability for patients with schizophrenia than for healthy participants. The patients' recognition deficit was accompanied by the absence of the midfrontal FN400 and late parietal ERP old/new effects in the mismatched-expression condition. By contrast, preserved midfrontal FN400 and late parietal ERP old/new effects were found in both groups in the unchanged-expression condition. Thus, the preserved parietal old/new effect previously observed in schizophrenia was no longer found here in the situation in which expression changes took place between the study and recognition phases. These findings suggest that, when they are not supposed to take the change of expression into account, the recognition deficit observed here in patients with schizophrenia resulted from an impairment in the mechanisms underlying the emergence, assessment, or utilization of familiarity--as indexed by the ERP old/new effects. In these natural conditions, the impact of the expression change on the implementation of retrieval processes offers new insight into schizophrenia-linked deficits in face recognition, with substantial phenomenological differences with respect to the emergence of familiarity.

Contextual Modulation of N400 Amplitude to Lexically Ambiguous Words

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Titone, Debra A.; Salisbury, Dean F.

2004-01-01

Through much is known about the N400 component, an event-related EEG potential that is sensitive to semantic manipulations, it is unclear whether modulations of N400 amplitude reflect automatic processing, controlled processing, or both. We examined this issue using a semantic judgment task that manipulated local and global contextual cues. Word…

Immediate integration of novel meanings: N400 support for an embodied view of language comprehension.

PubMed

Chwilla, Dorothee J; Kolk, Herman H J; Vissers, Constance T W M

2007-12-05

A substantial part of language understanding depends on our previous experiences, but part of it consists of the creation of new meanings. Such new meanings cannot be retrieved from memory but still have to be constructed. The goals of this article were: first, to explore the nature of new meaning creation, and second, to test abstract symbol theories against embodied theories of meaning. We presented context-setting sentences followed by a test sentence to which ERPs were recorded that described a novel sensible or novel senseless situation (e.g., "The boys searched for branches/bushes [sensible/senseless] with which they went drumming..."). Novel sensible contexts that were not associatively nor semantically related were matched to novel senseless contexts in terms of familiarity and semantic similarity by Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). Abstract symbol theories like LSA cannot explain facilitation for novel sensible situations, whereas the embodied theory of Glenberg and Robertson [Glenberg, A.M., Robertson, D.A., 2000. Symbol grounding and meaning: A comparison of high-dimensional and embodied theories of meaning. Journal of Memory and Language, 43, 379-401.] in which meaning is grounded in perception and action can account for facilitation. Experiment 1 revealed an N400 effect in a sensibility judgment task. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this effect generalizes to a situation in which participants read for comprehension. Our findings support the following conclusions: First, participants can establish new meanings not stored in memory. Second, this is the first ERP study that shows that N400 is sensitive to new meanings and that these are created immediately - that is, in the same time frame as associative and semantic relations. Third, our N400 effects support embodied theories of meaning and challenge abstract symbol theories that can only discover meaningfulness by consulting stored symbolic knowledge.

An ERP investigation of conditional reasoning with emotional and neutral contents.

PubMed

Blanchette, Isabelle; El-Deredy, Wael

2014-11-01

In two experiments we investigate conditional reasoning using event-related potentials (ERPs). Our goal was to examine the time course of inference making in two conditional forms, one logically valid (Modus Ponens, MP) and one logically invalid (Affirming the Consequent, AC). We focus particularly on the involvement of semantically-based inferential processes potentially marked by modulations of the N400. We also compared reasoning about emotional and neutral contents with separate sets of stimuli of differing linguistic complexity across the two experiments. Both MP and AC modulated the N400 component, suggesting the involvement of a semantically-based inferential mechanism common across different logical forms, content types, and linguistic features of the problems. Emotion did not have an effect on early components, and did not interact with components related to inference making. There was a main effect of emotion in the 800-1050 ms time window, consistent with an effect on sustained attention. The results suggest that conditional reasoning is not a purely formal process but that it importantly implicates semantic processing, and that the effect of emotion on reasoning does not primarily operate through a modulation of early automatic stages of information processing. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The priming of priming: Evidence that the N400 reflects context-dependent post-retrieval word integration in working memory.

PubMed

Steinhauer, Karsten; Royle, Phaedra; Drury, John E; Fromont, Lauren A

2017-06-09

Which cognitive processes are reflected by the N400 in ERPs is still controversial. Various recent articles (Lau et al., 2008; Brouwer et al., 2012) have revived the idea that only lexical pre-activation processes (such as automatic spreading activation, ASA) are strongly supported, while post-lexical integrative processes are not. Challenging this view, the present ERP study replicates a behavioral study by McKoon and Ratcliff (1995) who demonstrated that a prime-target pair such as finger - hand shows stronger priming when a majority of other pairs in the list share the analogous semantic relationship (here: part-whole), even at short stimulus onset asynchronies (250ms). We created lists with four different types of semantic relationship (synonyms, part-whole, category-member, and opposites) and compared priming for pairs in a consistent list with those in an inconsistent list as well as unrelated items. Highly significant N400 reductions were found for both relatedness priming (unrelated vs. inconsistent) and relational priming (inconsistent vs. consistent). These data are taken as strong evidence that N400 priming effects are not exclusively carried by ASA-like mechanisms during lexical retrieval but also include post-lexical integration in working memory. We link the present findings to a neurocomputational model for relational reasoning (Knowlton et al., 2012) and to recent discussions of context-dependent conceptual activations (Yee and Thompson-Schill, 2016). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An ERP study of passive creative conceptual expansion using a modified alternate uses task.

PubMed

Kröger, Sören; Rutter, Barbara; Hill, Holger; Windmann, Sabine; Hermann, Christiane; Abraham, Anna

2013-08-21

A novel ERP paradigm was employed to investigate conceptual expansion, a central component of creative thinking. Participants were presented with word pairs, consisting of everyday objects and uses for these objects, which had to be judged based on the two defining criteria of creative products: unusualness and appropriateness. Three subject-determined trial types resulted from this judgement: high unusual and low appropriate (nonsensical uses), low unusual and high appropriate (common uses), and high unusual and high appropriate (creative uses). Word pairs of the creative uses type are held to passively induce conceptual expansion. The N400 component was not specifically modulated by conceptual expansion but was, instead, generally responsive as a function of unusualness or novelty of the stimuli (nonsense=creative>common). Explorative analyses in a later time window (500-900 ms) revealed that ERP activity in this phase indexes appropriateness (nonsense>creative=common). In the discussion of these findings with reference to the literature on semantic cognition, both components are proposed as indexing processes relevant to conceptual expansion as they are selectively involved in the encoding and integration of a newly established semantic connection between two previously unrelated concepts. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The N400 as a snapshot of interactive processing: evidence from regression analyses of orthographic neighbor and lexical associate effects

PubMed Central

Laszlo, Sarah; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

Linking print with meaning tends to be divided into subprocesses, such as recognition of an input's lexical entry and subsequent access of semantics. However, recent results suggest that the set of semantic features activated by an input is broader than implied by a view wherein access serially follows recognition. EEG was collected from participants who viewed items varying in number and frequency of both orthographic neighbors and lexical associates. Regression analysis of single item ERPs replicated past findings, showing that N400 amplitudes are greater for items with more neighbors, and further revealed that N400 amplitudes increase for items with more lexical associates and with higher frequency neighbors or associates. Together, the data suggest that in the N400 time window semantic features of items broadly related to inputs are active, consistent with models in which semantic access takes place in parallel with stimulus recognition. PMID:20624252

Examining ERP correlates of recognition memory: Evidence of accurate source recognition without recollection

PubMed Central

Addante, Richard, J.; Ranganath, Charan; Yonelinas, Andrew, P.

2012-01-01

Recollection is typically associated with high recognition confidence and accurate source memory. However, subjects sometimes make accurate source memory judgments even for items that are not confidently recognized, and it is not known whether these responses are based on recollection or some other memory process. In the current study, we measured event related potentials (ERPs) while subjects made item and source memory confidence judgments in order to determine whether recollection supported accurate source recognition responses for items that were not confidently recognized. In line with previous studies, we found that recognition memory was associated with two ERP effects: an early on-setting FN400 effect, and a later parietal old-new effect [Late Positive Component (LPC)], which have been associated with familiarity and recollection, respectively. The FN400 increased gradually with item recognition confidence, whereas the LPC was only observed for highly confident recognition responses. The LPC was also related to source accuracy, but only for items that had received a high confidence item recognition response; accurate source judgments to items that were less confidently recognized did not exhibit the typical ERP correlate of recollection or familiarity, but rather showed a late, broadly distributed negative ERP difference. The results indicate that accurate source judgments of episodic context can occur even when recollection fails. PMID:22548808

Concreteness in Word Processing: ERP and Behavioral Effects in a Lexical Decision Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barber, Horacio A.; Otten, Leun J.; Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vigliocco, Gabriella

2013-01-01

Relative to abstract words, concrete words typically elicit faster response times and larger N400 and N700 event-related potential (ERP) brain responses. These effects have been interpreted as reflecting the denser links to associated semantic information of concrete words and their recruitment of visual imagery processes. Here, we examined…

The face-selective N170 component is modulated by facial color.

PubMed

Nakajima, Kae; Minami, Tetsuto; Nakauchi, Shigeki

2012-08-01

Faces play an important role in social interaction by conveying information and emotion. Of the various components of the face, color particularly provides important clues with regard to perception of age, sex, health status, and attractiveness. In event-related potential (ERP) studies, the N170 component has been identified as face-selective. To determine the effect of color on face processing, we investigated the modulation of N170 by facial color. We recorded ERPs while subjects viewed facial color stimuli at 8 hue angles, which were generated by rotating the original facial color distribution around the white point by 45° for each human face. Responses to facial color were localized to the left, but not to the right hemisphere. N170 amplitudes gradually increased in proportion to the increase in hue angle from the natural-colored face. This suggests that N170 amplitude in the left hemisphere reflects processing of facial color information. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Decomposing Animacy Reversals between Agents and Experiencers: An ERP Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bourguignon, Nicolas; Drury, John E.; Valois, Daniel; Steinhauer, Karsten

2012-01-01

The present study aimed to refine current hypotheses regarding thematic reversal anomalies, which have been found to elicit either N400 or--more frequently--"semantic-P600" (sP600) effects. Our goal was to investigate whether distinct ERP profiles reflect aspectual-thematic differences between Agent-Subject Verbs (ASVs; e.g., "to eat") and…

Dorsolateral pFC and the representation of the incorrect use of an object: the transcranial direct current stimulation effect on N400 for visual and linguistic stimuli.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Vitaloni, Silvia

2014-02-01

In this study, we explored the representation of an incongruent action (instrumentally incorrect use of an object) in comparison with sentences ending with an incongruent action word, taking into account the role of the activation of the left dorsolateral pFC (DLPFC). This activity was appositely modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The effect of tDCS when participants processed congruent/incongruent object-related actions (Experiment 1) or sentences (Experiment 2) was verified by measuring changes in the ERP N400, error rates (ERs), and RTs. In Experiment 1, 30 participants performed the detection task within a dynamic context (video tapes representing a sequence of four action frames). In Experiment 2, 28 participants read sentences that represented object-related actions. The stimulation effect (a cathode applied to the DLPFC and an anode to the right supraorbital region) was analyzed by comparing the ER, RT, and ERP profiles before and after stimulation (or sham treatment). A significant reduction of the N400 was observed for incongruent stimuli in the case of cathodal (inhibitory) stimulation of the DLPFC in comparison with prestimulation conditions for Experiment 1, but not Experiment 2. Moreover, ERs were increased, and RTs were reduced in response to incongruent conditions after tDCS, but not after sham stimulation in Experiment 1. It is suggested that perturbation of the DLPFC may limit the ability to analyze a semantically anomalous action sequence as a reduced N400 ERP effect and increased random responses was observed. Finally, the contribution of the frontal area to the semantic processing of actions is discussed.

How microsaccades relate to lateralized ERP components of spatial attention: A co-registration study.

PubMed

Meyberg, Susann; Sommer, Werner; Dimigen, Olaf

2017-05-01

Covert shifts of attention that follow the presentation of a cue are associated with lateralized components in the event-related potential (ERP): the "early directing attention negativity" (EDAN) and the "anterior directing attention negativity" (ADAN). Traditionally, these shifts are thought to take place while gaze is fixated and, thus, in the absence of saccades. However, microsaccades of small amplitude (<1°) occur frequently and involuntarily also during fixation and are closely correlated with spatial attention. To investigate potential links between microsaccades and lateralized ERP components, we simultaneously recorded eye movements and ERPs in a spatial cueing task. As a first major result, we show that both the posterior EDAN and the orientation of microsaccades align more strongly with the location of the task-relevant part of the cue stimulus than with the direction of the attention shift indicated by that cue. A coupling between microsaccades and EDAN was also present on the single-trial level: The EDAN was largest when microsaccades were oriented toward the relevant cue, but absent when microsaccades were oriented away from it, suggesting that EDAN and microsaccades are generated by the same neural network, which selects relevant stimuli and orients behavior toward them. As a second major result, we show that small corneoretinal artifacts from microsaccades, which fall below conventional EOG rejection thresholds, contaminate the measurement of the ADAN. After correcting the EEG for microsaccade-related artifacts with an optimized variant of independent component analysis, ADAN was abolished at frontal sites, but a genuine ADAN was still present at central sites. Thus, the combined measurement of microsaccades and lateralized ERPs sheds new light onto cue-elicited shifts of covert attention. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The role of spatial frequency information for ERP components sensitive to faces and emotional facial expression.

PubMed

Holmes, Amanda; Winston, Joel S; Eimer, Martin

2005-10-01

To investigate the impact of spatial frequency on emotional facial expression analysis, ERPs were recorded in response to low spatial frequency (LSF), high spatial frequency (HSF), and unfiltered broad spatial frequency (BSF) faces with fearful or neutral expressions, houses, and chairs. In line with previous findings, BSF fearful facial expressions elicited a greater frontal positivity than BSF neutral facial expressions, starting at about 150 ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, this emotional expression effect was absent for HSF and LSF faces. Given that some brain regions involved in emotion processing, such as amygdala and connected structures, are selectively tuned to LSF visual inputs, these data suggest that ERP effects of emotional facial expression do not directly reflect activity in these regions. It is argued that higher order neocortical brain systems are involved in the generation of emotion-specific waveform modulations. The face-sensitive N170 component was neither affected by emotional facial expression nor by spatial frequency information.

Taking a Radical Position: Evidence for Position-Specific Radical Representations in Chinese Character Recognition Using Masked Priming ERP

PubMed Central

Su, I.-Fan; Mak, Sin-Ching Cassie; Cheung, Lai-Ying Milly; Law, Sam-Po

2012-01-01

In the investigation of orthographic representation of Chinese characters, one question that has stimulated much research is whether radicals (character components) are specified for spatial position in a character (e.g., Ding et al., 2004; Tsang and Chen, 2009). Differing from previous work, component or radical position information in this study is conceived in terms of relative frequency across different positions of characters containing it. A lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm focusing on radicals with preferred position of occurrence was conducted. A radical position that encompasses more characters than other positions was identified to be the preferred position of a particular radical. The prime that was exposed for 96 ms might share a radical with the target in the same or different positions. Moreover, the shared radical appeared either in its preferred or non-preferred position in the target. While response latencies only revealed the effect of graphical similarity, both effects of graphical similarity and radical position preference were found in the event-related potential (ERP) results. The former effect was reflected in greater positivity in occipital P1 and greater negativity in N400 for radicals in different positions in prime and target characters. The latter effect manifested as greater negativity in occipital N170 and greater positivity in frontal P200 in the same time window elicited by radicals in their non-preferred position. Equally interesting was the reversal of the effect of radical position preference in N400 with greater negativity associated with radicals in preferred position. These findings identify the early ERP components associated with activation of position-specific radical representations in the orthographic lexicon, and reveal the change in the nature of competition from processing at the radical level to the lexical level. PMID:23024634

Single-trial EEG-informed fMRI reveals spatial dependency of BOLD signal on early and late IC-ERP amplitudes during face recognition.

PubMed

Wirsich, Jonathan; Bénar, Christian; Ranjeva, Jean-Philippe; Descoins, Médéric; Soulier, Elisabeth; Le Troter, Arnaud; Confort-Gouny, Sylviane; Liégeois-Chauvel, Catherine; Guye, Maxime

2014-10-15

Simultaneous EEG-fMRI has opened up new avenues for improving the spatio-temporal resolution of functional brain studies. However, this method usually suffers from poor EEG quality, especially for evoked potentials (ERPs), due to specific artifacts. As such, the use of EEG-informed fMRI analysis in the context of cognitive studies has particularly focused on optimizing narrow ERP time windows of interest, which ignores the rich diverse temporal information of the EEG signal. Here, we propose to use simultaneous EEG-fMRI to investigate the neural cascade occurring during face recognition in 14 healthy volunteers by using the successive ERP peaks recorded during the cognitive part of this process. N170, N400 and P600 peaks, commonly associated with face recognition, were successfully and reproducibly identified for each trial and each subject by using a group independent component analysis (ICA). For the first time we use this group ICA to extract several independent components (IC) corresponding to the sequence of activation and used single-trial peaks as modulation parameters in a general linear model (GLM) of fMRI data. We obtained an occipital-temporal-frontal stream of BOLD signal modulation, in accordance with the three successive IC-ERPs providing an unprecedented spatio-temporal characterization of the whole cognitive process as defined by BOLD signal modulation. By using this approach, the pattern of EEG-informed BOLD modulation provided improved characterization of the network involved than the fMRI-only analysis or the source reconstruction of the three ERPs; the latter techniques showing only two regions in common localized in the occipital lobe. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual Differences in Verbal Working Memory Underlie a Tradeoff between Semantic and Structural Processing Difficulty during Language Comprehension: An ERP Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Albert E.; Oines, Leif; Miyake, Akira

2018-01-01

This study investigated the processes reflected in the widely observed N400 and P600 event-related potential (ERP) effects and tested the hypothesis that the N400 and P600 effects are functionally linked in a tradeoff relationship, constrained in part by individual differences in cognitive ability. Sixty participants read sentences, and ERP…

The time course of individual face recognition: A pattern analysis of ERP signals.

PubMed

Nemrodov, Dan; Niemeier, Matthias; Mok, Jenkin Ngo Yin; Nestor, Adrian

2016-05-15

An extensive body of work documents the time course of neural face processing in the human visual cortex. However, the majority of this work has focused on specific temporal landmarks, such as N170 and N250 components, derived through univariate analyses of EEG data. Here, we take on a broader evaluation of ERP signals related to individual face recognition as we attempt to move beyond the leading theoretical and methodological framework through the application of pattern analysis to ERP data. Specifically, we investigate the spatiotemporal profile of identity recognition across variation in emotional expression. To this end, we apply pattern classification to ERP signals both in time, for any single electrode, and in space, across multiple electrodes. Our results confirm the significance of traditional ERP components in face processing. At the same time though, they support the idea that the temporal profile of face recognition is incompletely described by such components. First, we show that signals associated with different facial identities can be discriminated from each other outside the scope of these components, as early as 70ms following stimulus presentation. Next, electrodes associated with traditional ERP components as well as, critically, those not associated with such components are shown to contribute information to stimulus discriminability. And last, the levels of ERP-based pattern discrimination are found to correlate with recognition accuracy across subjects confirming the relevance of these methods for bridging brain and behavior data. Altogether, the current results shed new light on the fine-grained time course of neural face processing and showcase the value of novel methods for pattern analysis to investigating fundamental aspects of visual recognition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An ERP study on initial second language vocabulary learning.

PubMed

Yum, Yen Na; Midgley, Katherine J; Holcomb, Phillip J; Grainger, Jonathan

2014-04-01

This study examined the very initial phases of orthographic and semantic acquisition in monolingual native English speakers learning Chinese words under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants engaged in 10 sessions of vocabulary learning, four of which were used to obtain ERPs. Performance in behavioral tests improved over sessions, and these data were used to define fast and slow learners. Most important is that ERPs in the two groups of learners revealed qualitatively distinct learning patterns. Only fast learners showed a left-lateralized increase in N170 amplitude with training. Furthermore, only fast learners showed an increased N400 amplitude with training, with a distinct anterior distribution. Slow learners, on the other hand, showed a posterior positive effect, with increasingly positive-going waveforms in occipital sites as training progressed. Possible mechanisms underlying these qualitative differences are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Lexical prediction via forward models: N400 evidence from German Sign Language.

PubMed

Hosemann, Jana; Herrmann, Annika; Steinbach, Markus; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina; Schlesewsky, Matthias

2013-09-01

Models of language processing in the human brain often emphasize the prediction of upcoming input-for example in order to explain the rapidity of language understanding. However, the precise mechanisms of prediction are still poorly understood. Forward models, which draw upon the language production system to set up expectations during comprehension, provide a promising approach in this regard. Here, we present an event-related potential (ERP) study on German Sign Language (DGS) which tested the hypotheses of a forward model perspective on prediction. Sign languages involve relatively long transition phases between one sign and the next, which should be anticipated as part of a forward model-based prediction even though they are semantically empty. Native speakers of DGS watched videos of naturally signed DGS sentences which either ended with an expected or a (semantically) unexpected sign. Unexpected signs engendered a biphasic N400-late positivity pattern. Crucially, N400 onset preceded critical sign onset and was thus clearly elicited by properties of the transition phase. The comprehension system thereby clearly anticipated modality-specific information about the realization of the predicted semantic item. These results provide strong converging support for the application of forward models in language comprehension. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Word-to-text integration: ERP evidence for semantic and orthographic effects in Chinese.

PubMed

Chen, Lin; Fang, Xiaoping; Perfetti, Charles A

2017-05-01

Although writing systems affect reading at the level of word identification, one expects writing system to have minimal effects on comprehension processes. We tested this assumption by recording ERPs while native Chinese speakers read short texts for comprehension in the word-to-text integration (WTI) paradigm to compare with studies of English using this paradigm. Of interest was the ERP on a 2-character word that began the second sentence of the text, with the first sentence varied to manipulate co-reference with the critical word in the second sentence. A paraphrase condition in which the critical word meaning was coreferential with a word in the first sentence showed a reduced N400 reduction. Consistent with results in English, this N400 effect suggests immediate integration of a Chinese 2-character word with the meaning of the text. Chinese allows an additional test of a morpheme effect when one character of a two-character word is repeated across the sentence boundary, thus having both orthographic and meaning overlap. This shared morpheme condition showed no effect during the timeframe when orthographic effects are observed (e.g. N200), nor did it show an N400 effect. However, character repetition did produce an N400 reduction on parietal sites regardless it represented the same morpheme or a different one. The results indicate that the WTI integration effect is general across writing systems at the meaning level, but that the orthographic form nonetheless has an effect, and is specifically functional in Chinese reading.

Word-to-text integration: ERP evidence for semantic and orthographic effects in Chinese

PubMed Central

Chen, Lin; Fang, Xiaoping; Perfetti, Charles A.

2016-01-01

Although writing systems affect reading at the level of word identification, one expects writing system to have minimal effects on comprehension processes. We tested this assumption by recording ERPs while native Chinese speakers read short texts for comprehension in the word-to-text integration (WTI) paradigm to compare with studies of English using this paradigm. Of interest was the ERP on a 2-character word that began the second sentence of the text, with the first sentence varied to manipulate co-reference with the critical word in the second sentence. A paraphrase condition in which the critical word meaning was coreferential with a word in the first sentence showed a reduced N400 reduction. Consistent with results in English, this N400 effect suggests immediate integration of a Chinese 2-character word with the meaning of the text. Chinese allows an additional test of a morpheme effect when one character of a two-character word is repeated across the sentence boundary, thus having both orthographic and meaning overlap. This shared morpheme condition showed no effect during the timeframe when orthographic effects are observed (e.g. N200), nor did it show an N400 effect. However, character repetition did produce an N400 reduction on parietal sites regardless it represented the same morpheme or a different one. The results indicate that the WTI integration effect is general across writing systems at the meaning level, but that the orthographic form nonetheless has an effect, and is specifically functional in Chinese reading. PMID:28670097

Picture superiority doubly dissociates the ERP correlates of recollection and familiarity.

PubMed

Curran, Tim; Doyle, Jeanne

2011-05-01

Two experiments investigated the processes underlying the picture superiority effect on recognition memory. Studied pictures were associated with higher accuracy than studied words, regardless of whether test stimuli were words (Experiment 1) or pictures (Experiment 2). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded during test suggested that the 300-500 msec FN400 old/new effect, hypothesized to be related to familiarity-based recognition, benefited from study/test congruity, such that it was larger when study and test format remained constant than when they differed. The 500-800 msec parietal old/new effect, hypothesized to be related to recollection, benefited from studying pictures, regardless of test format. The parallel between the accuracy and parietal ERP results suggests that picture superiority may arise from encoding the distinctive attributes of pictures in a manner that enhances their later recollection. Furthermore, when words were tested, opposite effects of studying words versus studying pictures were observed on the FN400 (word > picture) versus parietal (picture > word) old/new effects--providing strong evidence for a crossover interaction between these components that is consistent with a dual-process perspective.

Neurodynamics of executive control processes in bilinguals: evidence from ERP and source reconstruction analyses.

PubMed

Heidlmayr, Karin; Hemforth, Barbara; Moutier, Sylvain; Isel, Frédéric

2015-01-01

The present study was designed to examine the impact of bilingualism on the neuronal activity in different executive control processes namely conflict monitoring, control implementation (i.e., interference suppression and conflict resolution) and overcoming of inhibition. Twenty-two highly proficient but non-balanced successive French-German bilingual adults and 22 monolingual adults performed a combined Stroop/Negative priming task while event-related potential (ERP) were recorded online. The data revealed that the ERP effects were reduced in bilinguals in comparison to monolinguals but only in the Stroop task and limited to the N400 and the sustained fronto-central negative-going potential time windows. This result suggests that bilingualism may impact the process of control implementation rather than the process of conflict monitoring (N200). Critically, our study revealed a differential time course of the involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conflict processing. While the ACC showed major activation in the early time windows (N200 and N400) but not in the latest time window (late sustained negative-going potential), the PFC became unilaterally active in the left hemisphere in the N400 and the late sustained negative-going potential time windows. Taken together, the present electroencephalography data lend support to a cascading neurophysiological model of executive control processes, in which ACC and PFC may play a determining role.

Neurodynamics of executive control processes in bilinguals: evidence from ERP and source reconstruction analyses

PubMed Central

Heidlmayr, Karin; Hemforth, Barbara; Moutier, Sylvain; Isel, Frédéric

2015-01-01

The present study was designed to examine the impact of bilingualism on the neuronal activity in different executive control processes namely conflict monitoring, control implementation (i.e., interference suppression and conflict resolution) and overcoming of inhibition. Twenty-two highly proficient but non-balanced successive French–German bilingual adults and 22 monolingual adults performed a combined Stroop/Negative priming task while event-related potential (ERP) were recorded online. The data revealed that the ERP effects were reduced in bilinguals in comparison to monolinguals but only in the Stroop task and limited to the N400 and the sustained fronto-central negative-going potential time windows. This result suggests that bilingualism may impact the process of control implementation rather than the process of conflict monitoring (N200). Critically, our study revealed a differential time course of the involvement of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conflict processing. While the ACC showed major activation in the early time windows (N200 and N400) but not in the latest time window (late sustained negative-going potential), the PFC became unilaterally active in the left hemisphere in the N400 and the late sustained negative-going potential time windows. Taken together, the present electroencephalography data lend support to a cascading neurophysiological model of executive control processes, in which ACC and PFC may play a determining role. PMID:26124740

Modafinil improves information processing speed and increases energetic resources for orientation of attention in narcoleptics: double-blind, placebo-controlled ERP studies with low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA).

PubMed

Saletu, Michael; Anderer, Peter; Saletu-Zyhlarz, Gerda Maria; Mandl, Magdalena; Saletu, Bernd; Zeitlhofer, Josef

2009-09-01

Recent neuroimaging studies in narcolepsy discovered significant gray matter loss in the right prefrontal and frontomesial cortex, a critical region for executive processing. In the present study, event-related potential (ERP) low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to investigate cognition before and after modafinil as compared with placebo. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over design, 15 patients were treated with a 3-week fixed titration scheme of modafinil and placebo. The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) and auditory ERPs (odd-ball paradigm) were obtained before and after the 3 weeks of therapy. Latencies, amplitudes and LORETA sources were determined for standard (N1 and P2) and target (N2 and P300) ERP components. The ESS score improved significantly from 15.4 (+/- 4.0) under placebo to 10.2 (+/- 4.1) under 400mg modafinil (p=0.004). In the MWT, latency to sleep increased nonsignificantly after modafinil treatment (11.9+/-6.9 versus 13.3+/-7.1 min). In the ERP, N2 and P300 latencies were shortened significantly. While ERP amplitudes showed only minor changes, LORETA revealed increased source strengths: for N1 in the left auditory cortex and for P300 in the medial and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. LORETA revealed that modafinil improved information processing speed and increased energetic resources in prefrontal cortical regions, which is in agreement with other neuroimaging studies.

On the incrementality of pragmatic processing: An ERP investigation of informativeness and pragmatic abilities

PubMed Central

Nieuwland, Mante S.; Ditman, Tali; Kuperberg, Gina R.

2010-01-01

In two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, we determined to what extent Grice’s maxim of informativeness as well as pragmatic ability contributes to the incremental build-up of sentence meaning, by examining the impact of underinformative versus informative scalar statements (e.g. “Some people have lungs/pets, and…”) on the N400 event-related potential (ERP), an electrophysiological index of semantic processing. In Experiment 1, only pragmatically skilled participants (as indexed by the Autism Quotient Communication subscale) showed a larger N400 to underinformative statements. In Experiment 2, this effect disappeared when the critical words were unfocused so that the local underinformativeness went unnoticed (e.g., “Some people have lungs that…”). Our results suggest that, while pragmatic scalar meaning can incrementally contribute to sentence comprehension, this contribution is dependent on contextual factors, whether these are derived from individual pragmatic abilities or the overall experimental context. PMID:20936088

The N170 component is sensitive to face-like stimuli: a study of Chinese Peking opera makeup.

PubMed

Liu, Tiantian; Mu, Shoukuan; He, Huamin; Zhang, Lingcong; Fan, Cong; Ren, Jie; Zhang, Mingming; He, Weiqi; Luo, Wenbo

2016-12-01

The N170 component is considered a neural marker of face-sensitive processing. In the present study, the face-sensitive N170 component of event-related potentials (ERPs) was investigated with a modified oddball paradigm using a natural face (the standard stimulus), human- and animal-like makeup stimuli, scrambled control images that mixed human- and animal-like makeup pieces, and a grey control image. Nineteen participants were instructed to respond within 1000 ms by pressing the ' F ' or ' J ' key in response to the standard or deviant stimuli, respectively. We simultaneously recorded ERPs, response accuracy, and reaction times. The behavioral results showed that the main effect of stimulus type was significant for reaction time, whereas there were no significant differences in response accuracies among stimulus types. In relation to the ERPs, N170 amplitudes elicited by human-like makeup stimuli, animal-like makeup stimuli, scrambled control images, and a grey control image progressively decreased. A right hemisphere advantage was observed in the N170 amplitudes for human-like makeup stimuli, animal-like makeup stimuli, and scrambled control images but not for grey control image. These results indicate that the N170 component is sensitive to face-like stimuli and reflect configural processing in face recognition.

The N170 ERP component differs in laterality, distribution, and association with continuous reading measures for deaf and hearing readers.

PubMed

Emmorey, Karen; Midgley, Katherine J; Kohen, Casey B; Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova; Holcomb, Phillip J

2017-11-01

The temporo-occipitally distributed N170 ERP component is hypothesized to reflect print-tuning in skilled readers. This study investigated whether skilled deaf and hearing readers (matched on reading ability, but not phonological awareness) exhibit similar N170 patterns, given their distinct experiences learning to read. Thirty-two deaf and 32 hearing adults viewed words and symbol strings in a familiarity judgment task. In the N170 epoch (120-240ms) hearing readers produced greater negativity for words than symbols at left hemisphere (LH) temporo-parietal and occipital sites, while deaf readers only showed this asymmetry at occipital sites. Linear mixed effects regression was used to examine the influence of continuous measures of reading, spelling, and phonological skills on the N170 (120-240ms). For deaf readers, better reading ability was associated with a larger N170 over the right hemisphere (RH), but for hearing readers better reading ability was associated with a smaller RH N170. Better spelling ability was related to larger occipital N170s in deaf readers, but this relationship was weak in hearing readers. Better phonological awareness was associated with smaller N170s in the LH for hearing readers, but this association was weaker and in the RH for deaf readers. The results support the phonological mapping hypothesis for a left-lateralized temporo-parietal N170 in hearing readers and indicate that skilled reading is characterized by distinct patterns of neural tuning to print in deaf and hearing adults. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Modulation of the N400 component in relation to hypomanic personality traits in a word meaning ambiguity resolution task.

PubMed

Raucher-Chéné, Delphine; Terrien, Sarah; Gobin, Pamela; Gierski, Fabien; Kaladjian, Arthur; Besche-Richard, Chrystel

2017-09-01

High levels of hypomanic personality traits have been associated with an increased risk of developing bipolar disorder (BD). Changes in semantic content, impaired verbal associations, abnormal prosody, and abnormal speed of language are core features of BD, and are thought to be related to semantic processing abnormalities. In the present study, we used event-related potentials to investigate the relation between semantic processing (N400 component) and hypomanic personality traits. We assessed 65 healthy young adults on the Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS). Event-related potentials were recorded during a semantic ambiguity resolution task exploring semantic ambiguity (polysemous word ending a sentence) and congruency (target word semantically related to the sentence). As expected, semantic ambiguity and congruency both elicited an N400 effect across our sample. Correlation analyses showed a significant positive relationship between the Social Vitality subscore of the HPS and N400 modulation in the frontal region of interest in the incongruent unambiguous condition, and in the frontocentral region of interest in the incongruent ambiguous condition. We found differences in semantic processing (i.e., detection of incongruence and semantic inhibition) in individuals with higher Social Vitality subscores. In the light of the literature, we discuss the notion that a semantic processing impairment could be a potential marker of vulnerability to BD, and one that needs to be explored further in this clinical population. © 2017 The Authors. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences © 2017 Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology.

The Complex Pre-Execution Stage of Auditory Cognitive Control: ERPs Evidence from Stroop Tasks

PubMed Central

Yu, Bo; Wang, Xunda; Ma, Lin; Li, Liang; Li, Haifeng

2015-01-01

Cognitive control has been extensively studied from Event-Related Potential (ERP) point of view in visual modality using Stroop paradigms. Little work has been done in auditory Stroop paradigms, and inconsistent conclusions have been reported, especially on the conflict detection stage of cognitive control. This study investigated the early ERP components in an auditory Stroop paradigm, during which participants were asked to identify the volume of spoken words and ignore the word meanings. A series of significant ERP components were revealed that distinguished incongruent and congruent trials: two declined negative polarity waves (the N1 and the N2) and three declined positive polarity wave (the P1, the P2 and the P3) over the fronto-central area for the incongruent trials. These early ERP components imply that both a perceptual stage and an identification stage exist in the auditory Stroop effect. A 3-stage cognitive control model was thus proposed for a more detailed description of the human cognitive control mechanism in the auditory Stroop tasks. PMID:26368570

Hemispheric asymmetry in event knowledge activation during incremental language comprehension: A visual half-field ERP study.

PubMed

Metusalem, Ross; Kutas, Marta; Urbach, Thomas P; Elman, Jeffrey L

2016-04-01

During incremental language comprehension, the brain activates knowledge of described events, including knowledge elements that constitute semantic anomalies in their linguistic context. The present study investigates hemispheric asymmetries in this process, with the aim of advancing our understanding of the neural basis and functional properties of event knowledge activation during incremental comprehension. In a visual half-field event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, participants read brief discourses in which the third sentence contained a word that was either highly expected, semantically anomalous but related to the described event (Event-Related), or semantically anomalous but unrelated to the described event (Event-Unrelated). For both visual fields of target word presentation, semantically anomalous words elicited N400 ERP components of greater amplitude than did expected words. Crucially, Event-Related anomalous words elicited a reduced N400 relative to Event-Unrelated anomalous words only with left visual field/right hemisphere presentation. This result suggests that right hemisphere processes are critical to the activation of event knowledge elements that violate the linguistic context, and in doing so informs existing theories of hemispheric asymmetries in semantic processing during language comprehension. Additionally, this finding coincides with past research suggesting a crucial role for the right hemisphere in elaborative inference generation, raises interesting questions regarding hemispheric coordination in generating event-specific linguistic expectancies, and more generally highlights the possibility of functional dissociation of event knowledge activation for the generation of elaborative inferences and for linguistic expectancies. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Hemispheric Asymmetry in Event Knowledge Activation During Incremental Language Comprehension: A Visual Half-Field ERP Study

PubMed Central

Metusalem, Ross; Kutas, Marta; Urbach, Thomas P.; Elman, Jeffrey L.

2016-01-01

During incremental language comprehension, the brain activates knowledge of described events, including knowledge elements that constitute semantic anomalies in their linguistic context. The present study investigates hemispheric asymmetries in this process, with the aim of advancing our understanding of the neural basis and functional properties of event knowledge activation during incremental comprehension. In a visual half-field event-related brain potential (ERP) experiment, participants read brief discourses in which the third sentence contained a word that was either highly expected, semantically anomalous but related to the described event, or semantically anomalous but unrelated to the described event. For both visual fields of target word presentation, semantically anomalous words elicited N400 ERP components of greater amplitude than did expected words. Crucially, event-related anomalous words elicited a reduced N400 relative to event-unrelated anomalous words only with left visual field/right hemisphere presentation. This result suggests that right hemisphere processes are critical to the activation of event knowledge elements that violate the linguistic context, and in doing so informs existing theories of hemispheric asymmetries in semantic processing during language comprehension. Additionally, this finding coincides with past research suggesting a crucial role for the right hemisphere in elaborative inference generation, raises interesting questions regarding hemispheric coordination in generating event-specific linguistic expectancies, and more generally highlights the possibility of functional dissociation between event knowledge activation for the generation of elaborative inferences and for linguistic expectancies. PMID:26878980

Neural correlates of foreign-language learning in childhood: a 3-year longitudinal ERP study.

PubMed

Ojima, Shiro; Nakamura, Naoko; Matsuba-Kurita, Hiroko; Hoshino, Takahiro; Hagiwara, Hiroko

2011-01-01

A foreign language (a language not spoken in one's community) is difficult to master completely. Early introduction of foreign-language (FL) education during childhood is becoming a standard in many countries. However, the neural process of child FL learning still remains largely unknown. We longitudinally followed 322 school-age children with diverse FL proficiency for three consecutive years, and acquired children's ERP responses to FL words that were semantically congruous or incongruous with the preceding picture context. As FL proficiency increased, various ERP components previously reported in mother-tongue (L1) acquisition (such as a broad negativity, an N400, and a late positive component) appeared sequentially, critically in an identical order to L1 acquisition. This finding was supported not only by cross-sectional analyses of children at different proficiency levels but also by longitudinal analyses of the same children over time. Our data are consistent with the hypothesis that FL learning in childhood reproduces identical developmental stages in an identical order to L1 acquisition, suggesting that the nature of the child's brain itself may determine the normal course of FL learning. Future research should test the generalizability of the results in other aspects of language such as syntax.

ERPs, semantic processing and age.

PubMed

Miyamoto, T; Katayama, J; Koyama, T

1998-06-01

ERPs (N400, LPC and CNV) were elicited in two sets of subjects grouped according to age (young vs. elderly) using a word-pair category matching paradigm. Each prime consisted of a Japanese noun (constructed from two to four characters of the Hiragana) followed by one Chinese character (Kanji) as the target, this latter representing one of five semantic categories. There were two equally probable target conditions: match or mismatch. Each target was preceded by a prime, either belonging to, or not belonging to, the same semantic category. The subjects were required to respond with a specified button press to the given target according to the condition. We found RTs to be longer in the elderly subjects and under the mismatch condition. N400 amplitude was reduced in the elderly subjects under the mismatch condition and there was no difference between match and mismatch response, which were similar in amplitude to that under match condition for the young subjects. In addition, the CNV amplitudes were larger in the elderly subjects. These results suggested that functional changes in semantic processing through aging (larger semantic networks and diffuse semantic activation) were the cause of this N400 reduction, attributing a subsidiary role to attentional disturbance. We also discuss the importance of taking age-related changes into consideration in clinical studies.

Animacy matters: ERP evidence for the multi-dimensionality of topic-worthiness in Chinese.

PubMed

Hung, Yu-Chen; Schumacher, Petra B

2014-03-25

An event-related potential (ERP) study was conducted to investigate how animacy interacts with givenness during topic processing. Both animacy and givenness have been considered as within-discourse factors that contribute to an element׳s potential to form an optimal topic (i.e., topic-worthiness). ERPs were recorded while participants read question-answer pairs, of which the target sentence induced either a continuation or an alternation of a previously introduced topic (i.e., given vs. new). Depending on the context, a potential topic further differed in its animacy from the preceding one (i.e., animate vs. inanimate). The data revealed a robust givenness effect with an N400 reduction for given over new information across all conditions, substantiating the assumption that the N400 amplitude varies with the degree of context-based expectation. The resulting N400 effect was found independently of animacy. More strikingly, we also observed that givenness interacts with animacy in modulating the subsequent Late Positivity effect, which has been suggested to reflect internal discourse structuring effort and updating. A more pronounced Late Positivity was consistently elicited when a less prominent entity competed for topichood. Most crucially, the present research provides first electrophysiological evidence indicating that animacy outweighs givenness as a heuristic cue in determining the degree of topic-worthiness. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Trust at first sight: evidence from ERPs.

PubMed

Marzi, Tessa; Righi, Stefania; Ottonello, Sara; Cincotta, Massimo; Viggiano, Maria Pia

2014-01-01

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to tap the temporal dynamics of first impressions based on face appearance. Participants were asked to evaluate briefly presented faces for trustworthiness and political choice. Behaviorally, participants were better at discriminating faces that were pre-rated as untrustworthy. The ERP results showed that the P100 component was enhanced for untrustworthy faces, consistently with the view that signals of potential threat are given precedence in neural processing. The enhanced ERP responses to untrustworthy faces persisted throughout the processing sequence and the amplitude of early posterior negativity (EPN), and subsequent late positive potential (LPP) was increased with respect to trustworthy faces which, in contrast, elicited an enhanced positivity around 150 ms on frontal sites. These ERP patterns were found specifically for the trustworthiness evaluation and not for the political decision task. Political decision yielded an increase in the N170 amplitude, reflecting a more demanding and taxing structural encoding. Similar ERP responses, as previously reported in the literature for facial expressions processing, were found throughout the entire time course specifically elicited by faces explicitly judged as untrustworthy. One possibility might be that evolution has provided the brain with a 'special toolkit' for trust evaluation that is fast and triggers ERPs related to emotional processing.

Online processing of moral transgressions: ERP evidence for spontaneous evaluation

PubMed Central

Kunkel, Angelika; Mackenzie, Ian G.; Filik, Ruth

2015-01-01

Experimental studies using fictional moral dilemmas indicate that both automatic emotional processes and controlled cognitive processes contribute to moral judgments. However, not much is known about how people process socio-normative violations that are more common to their everyday life nor the time-course of these processes. Thus, we recorded participants’ electrical brain activity while they were reading vignettes that either contained morally acceptable vs unacceptable information or text materials that contained information which was either consistent or inconsistent with their general world knowledge. A first event-related brain potential (ERP) positivity peaking at ∼200 ms after critical word onset (P200) was larger when this word involved a socio-normative or knowledge-based violation. Subsequently, knowledge-inconsistent words triggered a larger centroparietal ERP negativity at ∼320 ms (N400), indicating an influence on meaning construction. In contrast, a larger ERP positivity (larger late positivity), which also started at ∼320 ms after critical word onset, was elicited by morally unacceptable compared with acceptable words. We take this ERP positivity to reflect an implicit evaluative (good–bad) categorization process that is engaged during the online processing of moral transgressions. PMID:25556210

An ERP investigation of visual word recognition in syllabary scripts.

PubMed

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J

2013-06-01

The bimodal interactive-activation model has been successfully applied to understanding the neurocognitive processes involved in reading words in alphabetic scripts, as reflected in the modulation of ERP components in masked repetition priming. In order to test the generalizability of this approach, in the present study we examined word recognition in a different writing system, the Japanese syllabary scripts hiragana and katakana. Native Japanese participants were presented with repeated or unrelated pairs of Japanese words in which the prime and target words were both in the same script (within-script priming, Exp. 1) or were in the opposite script (cross-script priming, Exp. 2). As in previous studies with alphabetic scripts, in both experiments the N250 (sublexical processing) and N400 (lexical-semantic processing) components were modulated by priming, although the time course was somewhat delayed. The earlier N/P150 effect (visual feature processing) was present only in "Experiment 1: Within-script priming", in which the prime and target words shared visual features. Overall, the results provide support for the hypothesis that visual word recognition involves a generalizable set of neurocognitive processes that operate in similar manners across different writing systems and languages, as well as pointing to the viability of the bimodal interactive-activation framework for modeling such processes.

An ERP Investigation of Visual Word Recognition in Syllabary Scripts

PubMed Central

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J.

2013-01-01

The bi-modal interactive-activation model has been successfully applied to understanding the neuro-cognitive processes involved in reading words in alphabetic scripts, as reflected in the modulation of ERP components in masked repetition priming. In order to test the generalizability of this approach, the current study examined word recognition in a different writing system, the Japanese syllabary scripts Hiragana and Katakana. Native Japanese participants were presented with repeated or unrelated pairs of Japanese words where the prime and target words were both in the same script (within-script priming, Experiment 1) or were in the opposite script (cross-script priming, Experiment 2). As in previous studies with alphabetic scripts, in both experiments the N250 (sub-lexical processing) and N400 (lexical-semantic processing) components were modulated by priming, although the time-course was somewhat delayed. The earlier N/P150 effect (visual feature processing) was present only in Experiment 1 where prime and target words shared visual features. Overall, the results provide support for the hypothesis that visual word recognition involves a generalizable set of neuro-cognitive processes that operate in a similar manner across different writing systems and languages, as well as pointing to the viability of the bi-modal interactive activation framework for modeling such processes. PMID:23378278

Inversion and contrast polarity reversal affect both encoding and recognition processes of unfamiliar faces: a repetition study using ERPs.

PubMed

Itier, Roxane J; Taylor, Margot J

2002-02-01

Using ERPs in a face recognition task, we investigated whether inversion and contrast reversal, which seem to disrupt different aspects of face configuration, differentially affected encoding and memory for faces. Upright, inverted, and negative (contrast-reversed) unknown faces were either immediately repeated (0-lag) or repeated after 1 intervening face (1-lag). The encoding condition (new) consisted of the first presentation of items correctly recognized in the two repeated conditions. 0-lag faces were recognized better and faster than 1-lag faces. Inverted and negative pictures elicited longer reaction times, lower hit rates, and higher false alarm rates than upright faces. ERP analyses revealed that negative and inverted faces affected both early (encoding) and late (recognition) stages of face processing. Early components (N170, VPP) were delayed and enhanced by both inversion and contrast reversal which also affected P1 and P2 components. Amplitudes were higher for inverted faces at frontal and parietal sites from 350 to 600 ms. Priming effects were seen at encoding stages, revealed by shorter latencies and smaller amplitudes of N170 for repeated stimuli, which did not differ depending on face type. Repeated faces yielded more positive amplitudes than new faces from 250 to 450 ms frontally and from 400 to 600 ms parietally. However, ERP differences revealed that the magnitude of this repetition effect was smaller for negative and inverted than upright faces at 0-lag but not at 1-lag condition. Thus, face encoding and recognition processes were affected by inversion and contrast-reversal differently.

A Bayesian Approach to Estimating Coupling Between Neural Components: Evaluation of the Multiple Component, Event-Related Potential (mcERP) Algorithm

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Shah, Ankoor S.; Knuth, Kevin H.; Truccolo, Wilson A.; Ding, Ming-Zhou; Bressler, Steven L.; Schroeder, Charles E.; Clancy, Daniel (Technical Monitor)

2002-01-01

Accurate measurement of single-trial responses is key to a definitive use of complex electromagnetic and hemodynamic measurements in the investigation of brain dynamics. We developed the multiple component, Event-Related Potential (mcERP) approach to single-trial response estimation. To improve our resolution of dynamic interactions between neuronal ensembles located in different layers within a cortical region and/or in different cortical regions. The mcERP model assets that multiple components defined as stereotypic waveforms comprise the stimulus-evoked response and that these components may vary in amplitude and latency from trial to trial. Maximum a posteriori (MAP) solutions for the model are obtained by iterating a set of equations derived from the posterior probability. Our first goal was to use the ANTWERP algorithm to analyze interactions (specifically latency and amplitude correlation) between responses in different layers within a cortical region. Thus, we evaluated the model by applying the algorithm to synthetic data containing two correlated local components and one independent far-field component. Three cases were considered: the local components were correlated by an interaction in their single-trial amplitudes, by an interaction in their single-trial latencies, or by an interaction in both amplitude and latency. We then analyzed the accuracy with which the algorithm estimated the component waveshapes and the single-trial parameters as a function of the linearity of each of these relationships. Extensions of these analyses to real data are discussed as well as ongoing work to incorporate more detailed prior information.

Lexical Quality in the Brain: ERP evidence for robust word learning from context

PubMed Central

Frishkoff, Gwen A.; Perfetti, Charles A.; Collins-Thompson, K

2010-01-01

We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) before and after word learning, using training contexts that differed in their level of contextual support for meaning acquisition. Novel words appeared either in contexts that were semantically constraining, providing strong cues to meaning, or in contexts that were weakly constraining, that is, uninformative. After each sentence, participants were shown the word in isolation and were asked to generate a close synonym. Immediately after training, words trained in high-constraint contexts elicited a smaller left temporal negativity (N300FT7) compared with words trained in low-constraint contexts, and both types of trained words elicited a stronger medial frontal negativity (N350Fz) relative to familiar words. Two days after training the N300FT7 disappeared and was replaced by a later, left parietal (P600Pz) effect. To examine robust learning, we administered a semantic priming test two days after training. Familiar words and words trained in high-constraint contexts elicited strong N400 effects. By contrast, words trained in low-constraint contexts elicited a weak N400 effect, and novel (untrained rare) words elicited no semantic priming. These findings suggest that supportive contexts and the use of an active meaning-generation task may lead to robust word learning. The effects of this training can be observed as changes in an early left frontal component, as well as the classical N400 effect. We discuss implications for theories of "partial" semantic knowledge and for robust word learning and instruction. PMID:20614356

The ERP signature of the contextual diversity effect in visual word recognition.

PubMed

Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Comesaña, Montserrat; Perea, Manuel

2017-06-01

Behavioral experiments have revealed that words appearing in many different contexts are responded to faster than words that appear in few contexts. Although this contextual diversity (CD) effect has been found to be stronger than the word-frequency (WF) effect, it is a matter of debate whether the facilitative effects of CD and WF reflect the same underlying mechanisms. The analysis of the electrophysiological correlates of CD may shed some light on this issue. This experiment is the first to examine the ERPs to high- and low-CD words when WF is controlled for. Results revealed that while high-CD words produced faster responses than low-CD words, their ERPs showed larger negativities (225-325 ms) than low-CD words. This result goes in the opposite direction of the ERP WF effect (high-frequency words elicit smaller N400 amplitudes than low-frequency words). The direction and scalp distribution of the CD effect resembled the ERP effects associated with "semantic richness." Thus, while apparently related, CD and WF originate from different sources during the access of lexical-semantic representations.

On ERPs detection in disorders of consciousness rehabilitation

PubMed Central

Risetti, Monica; Formisano, Rita; Toppi, Jlenia; Quitadamo, Lucia R.; Bianchi, Luigi; Astolfi, Laura; Cincotti, Febo; Mattia, Donatella

2013-01-01

Disorders of Consciousness (DOC) like Vegetative State (VS), and Minimally Conscious State (MCS) are clinical conditions characterized by the absence or intermittent behavioral responsiveness. A neurophysiological monitoring of parameters like Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) could be a first step to follow-up the clinical evolution of these patients during their rehabilitation phase. Eleven patients diagnosed as VS (n = 8) and MCS (n = 3) by means of the JFK Coma Recovery Scale Revised (CRS-R) underwent scalp EEG recordings during the delivery of a 3-stimuli auditory oddball paradigm, which included standard, deviant tones and the subject own name (SON) presented as a novel stimulus, administered under passive and active conditions. Four patients who showed a change in their clinical status as detected by means of the CRS-R (i.e., moved from VS to MCS), were subjected to a second EEG recording session. All patients, but one (anoxic etiology), showed ERP components such as mismatch negativity (MMN) and novelty P300 (nP3) under passive condition. When patients were asked to count the novel stimuli (active condition), the nP3 component displayed a significant increase in amplitude (p = 0.009) and a wider topographical distribution with respect to the passive listening, only in MCS. In 2 out of the 4 patients who underwent a second recording session consistently with their transition from VS to MCS, the nP3 component elicited by passive listening of SON stimuli revealed a significant amplitude increment (p < 0.05). Most relevant, the amplitude of the nP3 component in the active condition, acquired in each patient and in all recording sessions, displayed a significant positive correlation with the total scores (p = 0.004) and with the auditory sub-scores (p < 0.00001) of the CRS-R administered before each EEG recording. As such, the present findings corroborate the value of ERPs monitoring in DOC patients to investigate residual unconscious and conscious cognitive

On ERPs detection in disorders of consciousness rehabilitation.

PubMed

Risetti, Monica; Formisano, Rita; Toppi, Jlenia; Quitadamo, Lucia R; Bianchi, Luigi; Astolfi, Laura; Cincotti, Febo; Mattia, Donatella

2013-01-01

Disorders of Consciousness (DOC) like Vegetative State (VS), and Minimally Conscious State (MCS) are clinical conditions characterized by the absence or intermittent behavioral responsiveness. A neurophysiological monitoring of parameters like Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) could be a first step to follow-up the clinical evolution of these patients during their rehabilitation phase. Eleven patients diagnosed as VS (n = 8) and MCS (n = 3) by means of the JFK Coma Recovery Scale Revised (CRS-R) underwent scalp EEG recordings during the delivery of a 3-stimuli auditory oddball paradigm, which included standard, deviant tones and the subject own name (SON) presented as a novel stimulus, administered under passive and active conditions. Four patients who showed a change in their clinical status as detected by means of the CRS-R (i.e., moved from VS to MCS), were subjected to a second EEG recording session. All patients, but one (anoxic etiology), showed ERP components such as mismatch negativity (MMN) and novelty P300 (nP3) under passive condition. When patients were asked to count the novel stimuli (active condition), the nP3 component displayed a significant increase in amplitude (p = 0.009) and a wider topographical distribution with respect to the passive listening, only in MCS. In 2 out of the 4 patients who underwent a second recording session consistently with their transition from VS to MCS, the nP3 component elicited by passive listening of SON stimuli revealed a significant amplitude increment (p < 0.05). Most relevant, the amplitude of the nP3 component in the active condition, acquired in each patient and in all recording sessions, displayed a significant positive correlation with the total scores (p = 0.004) and with the auditory sub-scores (p < 0.00001) of the CRS-R administered before each EEG recording. As such, the present findings corroborate the value of ERPs monitoring in DOC patients to investigate residual unconscious and conscious cognitive

Event-related-potential low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (ERP-LORETA) suggests decreased energetic resources for cognitive processing in narcolepsy.

PubMed

Saletu, Michael; Anderer, Peter; Saletu-Zyhlarz, Gerda Maria; Mandl, Magdalena; Zeitlhofer, Josef; Saletu, Bernd

2008-08-01

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are sensitive measures of both perceptual and cognitive processes. The aim of the present study was to identify brain regions involved in the processes of cognitive dysfunction in narcolepsy by means of ERP tomography. In 17 drug-free patients with narcolepsy and 17 controls, ERPs were recorded (auditory odd-ball paradigm). Latencies, amplitudes and LORETA sources were determined for standard (N1 and P2) and target (N2 and P300) ERP components. Psychometry included measures of mental performance, affect and critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF). In the ERPs patients demonstrated delayed cognitive N2 and P300 components and reduced amplitudes in midline regions, while N1 and P2 components did not differ from controls. LORETA suggested reduced P300 sources bilaterally in the precuneus, the anterior and posterior cingulate gyri, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the parahippocampal gyrus. In psychometry, patients demonstrated deteriorated mood, increased trait anxiety, decreased CFF and a trend toward reduced general verbal memory and psychomotor activity. Narcoleptic patients showed prolonged information processing, as indexed by N2 and P300 latencies and decreased energetic resources for cognitive processing. Electrophysiological aberrations in brain areas related to the 'executive attention network' and the 'limbic system' may contribute to a deterioration in mental performance and mood at the behavioral level.

Iconic gestures prime related concepts: an ERP study.

PubMed

Wu, Ying Croon; Coulson, Seana

2007-02-01

To assess priming by iconic gestures, we recorded EEG (at 29 scalp sites) in two experiments while adults watched short, soundless videos of spontaneously produced, cospeech iconic gestures followed by related or unrelated probe words. In Experiment 1, participants classified the relatedness between gestures and words. In Experiment 2, they attended to stimuli, and performed an incidental recognition memory test on words presented during the EEG recording session. Event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to the onset of probe words were measured, along with response latencies and word recognition rates. Although word relatedness did not affect reaction times or recognition rates, contextually related probe words elicited less-negative ERPs than did unrelated ones between 300 and 500 msec after stimulus onset (N400) in both experiments. These findings demonstrate sensitivity to semantic relations between iconic gestures and words in brain activity engendered during word comprehension.

ERPs reveal sub-lexical processing in Chinese character recognition.

PubMed

Wu, Yan; Mo, Deyuan; Tsang, Yiu-Kei; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2012-04-18

The present study used ERPs and a lexical decision task to explore the roles of position-general and position-specific radicals and their relative time courses in processing Chinese characters. Two types of radical frequency were manipulated: the number of characters containing a specific radical irrespective of position (i.e., radical frequency or RF) and the number of characters containing a specific radical at a particular position (i.e., position-specific radical frequency or PRF). The PRF effect was found to be associated with P150, P200, and N400, whereas the RF effect was associated with P200. These results suggest that both position-general and position-specific radicals could influence character processing, but the effect of position-specific radicals appeared earlier and lasted longer than that of position-general radicals. These findings are interpreted in terms of the specific orthographic properties of the sub-lexical components of Chinese characters. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Within-subject joint independent component analysis of simultaneous fMRI/ERP in an auditory oddball paradigm

PubMed Central

MANGALATHU-ARUMANA, J.; BEARDSLEY, S. A.; LIEBENTHAL, E.

2012-01-01

The integration of event-related potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can contribute to characterizing neural networks with high temporal and spatial resolution. This research aimed to determine the sensitivity and limitations of applying joint independent component analysis (jICA) within-subjects, for ERP and fMRI data collected simultaneously in a parametric auditory frequency oddball paradigm. In a group of 20 subjects, an increase in ERP peak amplitude ranging 1–8 μV in the time window of the P300 (350–700ms), and a correlated increase in fMRI signal in a network of regions including the right superior temporal and supramarginal gyri, was observed with the increase in deviant frequency difference. JICA of the same ERP and fMRI group data revealed activity in a similar network, albeit with stronger amplitude and larger extent. In addition, activity in the left pre- and post- central gyri, likely associated with right hand somato-motor response, was observed only with the jICA approach. Within-subject, the jICA approach revealed significantly stronger and more extensive activity in the brain regions associated with the auditory P300 than the P300 linear regression analysis. The results suggest that with the incorporation of spatial and temporal information from both imaging modalities, jICA may be a more sensitive method for extracting common sources of activity between ERP and fMRI. PMID:22377443

Infant Directed Speech Enhances Statistical Learning in Newborn Infants: An ERP Study

PubMed Central

Teinonen, Tuomas; Tervaniemi, Mari; Huotilainen, Minna

2016-01-01

Statistical learning and the social contexts of language addressed to infants are hypothesized to play important roles in early language development. Previous behavioral work has found that the exaggerated prosodic contours of infant-directed speech (IDS) facilitate statistical learning in 8-month-old infants. Here we examined the neural processes involved in on-line statistical learning and investigated whether the use of IDS facilitates statistical learning in sleeping newborns. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while newborns were exposed to12 pseudo-words, six spoken with exaggerated pitch contours of IDS and six spoken without exaggerated pitch contours (ADS) in ten alternating blocks. We examined whether ERP amplitudes for syllable position within a pseudo-word (word-initial vs. word-medial vs. word-final, indicating statistical word learning) and speech register (ADS vs. IDS) would interact. The ADS and IDS registers elicited similar ERP patterns for syllable position in an early 0–100 ms component but elicited different ERP effects in both the polarity and topographical distribution at 200–400 ms and 450–650 ms. These results provide the first evidence that the exaggerated pitch contours of IDS result in differences in brain activity linked to on-line statistical learning in sleeping newborns. PMID:27617967

Neural mechanisms underlying attribution of hostile intention in nonaggressive individuals: An ERP study.

PubMed

Gagnon, Jean; Aubin, Mercédès; Emond, Fannie Carrier; Derguy, Sophie; Bessette, Monique; Jolicoeur, Pierre

2016-12-01

Although the perception of hostile intentions in other people can have a clear adaptive function, researchers have paid little attention to the capacity of nonaggressive individuals to infer hostile intentions in others. The goal of the present study was to study brain mechanisms associated with expectations of hostile/non-hostile intent and their on-line evaluation. Scenarios with a hostile versus non-hostile social context followed by a character's ambiguous aversive behavior were presented to readers, and we recorded and analyzed event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to critical words that disambiguated the hostile versus non-hostile intent behind the behavior. Fifty nonaggressive individuals participated in the study. Non-hostile critical words that violated hostile intention expectations elicited a larger negative-going ERP deflection with central and posterior maximums between 400 and 600ms after word onset compatible with an N400 effect. Finally, there were marginally significant correlations between N400 effect sizes and hostile as well as neutral attribution bias measured by a self-report questionnaire. The results suggest that nonaggressive individuals evaluate rapidly, on-line, their attributions of the hostile intent of others. The methodology we developed provides the field with a new paradigm with which to study social attributions of hostile intent likely to contribute to hostile or aggressive reactions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Online processing of moral transgressions: ERP evidence for spontaneous evaluation.

PubMed

Leuthold, Hartmut; Kunkel, Angelika; Mackenzie, Ian G; Filik, Ruth

2015-08-01

Experimental studies using fictional moral dilemmas indicate that both automatic emotional processes and controlled cognitive processes contribute to moral judgments. However, not much is known about how people process socio-normative violations that are more common to their everyday life nor the time-course of these processes. Thus, we recorded participants' electrical brain activity while they were reading vignettes that either contained morally acceptable vs unacceptable information or text materials that contained information which was either consistent or inconsistent with their general world knowledge. A first event-related brain potential (ERP) positivity peaking at ∼200 ms after critical word onset (P200) was larger when this word involved a socio-normative or knowledge-based violation. Subsequently, knowledge-inconsistent words triggered a larger centroparietal ERP negativity at ∼320 ms (N400), indicating an influence on meaning construction. In contrast, a larger ERP positivity (larger late positivity), which also started at ∼320 ms after critical word onset, was elicited by morally unacceptable compared with acceptable words. We take this ERP positivity to reflect an implicit evaluative (good-bad) categorization process that is engaged during the online processing of moral transgressions. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Lag-length effect on repetition priming of famous and unfamiliar faces: evidence from N250r and N400.

PubMed

Nie, Aiqing; Li, Minye; Ye, Jingheng

2016-07-06

Previous event-related potentials research has reliably identified two repetition priming components in faces, the N250r and the N400, which are believed to reflect, respectively, the accessing to the stored structural representations and the semantic retrieval. However, the effect of lags longer than immediate repetition and shorter than 3 min on the two components has not been described as yet, and the interaction between lag length and familiarity is unclear. The current experiment aims to address these issues. In this experiment, famous and unfamiliar faces were represented after short, medium, or long lags, and participants were required to decide whether each face was known or not. The data showed that the frontal N250r, rather than the temporal counterpart, persisted to the medium lag case for famous faces; for unfamiliar faces, no N250r was observed. The frontal N400 was more regulated by lag length than the centroparietal counterpart. These results suggest that the frontal N250r and the frontal N400 are affected by the lag length; moreover, the former is more sensitive to the pre-experimental familiarity of faces.

PSPs and ERPs: applying the dynamics of post-synaptic potentials to individual units in simulation of temporally extended Event-Related Potential reading data.

PubMed

Laszlo, Sarah; Armstrong, Blair C

2014-05-01

The Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) framework is built on neural-style computation, and is thus well-suited for simulating the neural implementation of cognition. However, relatively little cognitive modeling work has concerned neural measures, instead focusing on behavior. Here, we extend a PDP model of reading-related components in the Event-Related Potential (ERP) to simulation of the N400 repetition effect. We accomplish this by incorporating the dynamics of cortical post-synaptic potentials--the source of the ERP signal--into the model. Simulations demonstrate that application of these dynamics is critical for model elicitation of repetition effects in the time and frequency domains. We conclude that by advancing a neurocomputational understanding of repetition effects, we are able to posit an interpretation of their source that is both explicitly specified and mechanistically different from the well-accepted cognitive one. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Low-Arousal Speech Noise Improves Performance in N-Back Task: An ERP Study

PubMed Central

Zhang, Dandan; Jin, Yi; Luo, Yuejia

2013-01-01

The relationship between noise and human performance is a crucial topic in ergonomic research. However, the brain dynamics of the emotional arousal effects of background noises are still unclear. The current study employed meaningless speech noises in the n-back working memory task to explore the changes of event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the noises with low arousal level vs. high arousal level. We found that the memory performance in low arousal condition were improved compared with the silent and the high arousal conditions; participants responded more quickly and had larger P2 and P3 amplitudes in low arousal condition while the performance and ERP components showed no significant difference between high arousal and silent conditions. These findings suggested that the emotional arousal dimension of background noises had a significant influence on human working memory performance, and that this effect was independent of the acoustic characteristics of noises (e.g., intensity) and the meaning of speech materials. The current findings improve our understanding of background noise effects on human performance and lay the ground for the investigation of patients with attention deficits. PMID:24204607

Performance improvement of ERP-based brain-computer interface via varied geometric patterns.

PubMed

Ma, Zheng; Qiu, Tianshuang

2017-12-01

Recently, many studies have been focusing on optimizing the stimulus of an event-related potential (ERP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI). However, little is known about the effectiveness when increasing the stimulus unpredictability. We investigated a new stimulus type of varied geometric pattern where both complexity and unpredictability of the stimulus are increased. The proposed and classical paradigms were compared in within-subject experiments with 16 healthy participants. Results showed that the BCI performance was significantly improved for the proposed paradigm, with an average online written symbol rate increasing by 138% comparing with that of the classical paradigm. Amplitudes of primary ERP components, such as N1, P2a, P2b, N2, were also found to be significantly enhanced with the proposed paradigm. In this paper, a novel ERP BCI paradigm with a new stimulus type of varied geometric pattern is proposed. By jointly increasing the complexity and unpredictability of the stimulus, the performance of an ERP BCI could be considerably improved.

Choosing MUSE: Validation of a Low-Cost, Portable EEG System for ERP Research

PubMed Central

Krigolson, Olave E.; Williams, Chad C.; Norton, Angela; Hassall, Cameron D.; Colino, Francisco L.

2017-01-01

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of portable low-cost electroencephalographic (EEG) systems available to researchers. However, to date the validation of the use of low-cost EEG systems has focused on continuous recording of EEG data and/or the replication of large system EEG setups reliant on event-markers to afford examination of event-related brain potentials (ERP). Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to conduct ERP research without being reliant on event markers using a portable MUSE EEG system and a single computer. Specifically, we report the results of two experiments using data collected with the MUSE EEG system—one using the well-known visual oddball paradigm and the other using a standard reward-learning task. Our results demonstrate that we could observe and quantify the N200 and P300 ERP components in the visual oddball task and the reward positivity (the mirror opposite component to the feedback-related negativity) in the reward-learning task. Specifically, single sample t-tests of component existence (all p's < 0.05), computation of Bayesian credible intervals, and 95% confidence intervals all statistically verified the existence of the N200, P300, and reward positivity in all analyses. We provide with this research paper an open source website with all the instructions, methods, and software to replicate our findings and to provide researchers with an easy way to use the MUSE EEG system for ERP research. Importantly, our work highlights that with a single computer and a portable EEG system such as the MUSE one can conduct ERP research with ease thus greatly extending the possible use of the ERP methodology to a variety of novel contexts. PMID:28344546

Choosing MUSE: Validation of a Low-Cost, Portable EEG System for ERP Research.

PubMed

Krigolson, Olave E; Williams, Chad C; Norton, Angela; Hassall, Cameron D; Colino, Francisco L

2017-01-01

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of portable low-cost electroencephalographic (EEG) systems available to researchers. However, to date the validation of the use of low-cost EEG systems has focused on continuous recording of EEG data and/or the replication of large system EEG setups reliant on event-markers to afford examination of event-related brain potentials (ERP). Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to conduct ERP research without being reliant on event markers using a portable MUSE EEG system and a single computer. Specifically, we report the results of two experiments using data collected with the MUSE EEG system-one using the well-known visual oddball paradigm and the other using a standard reward-learning task. Our results demonstrate that we could observe and quantify the N200 and P300 ERP components in the visual oddball task and the reward positivity (the mirror opposite component to the feedback-related negativity) in the reward-learning task. Specifically, single sample t -tests of component existence (all p 's < 0.05), computation of Bayesian credible intervals, and 95% confidence intervals all statistically verified the existence of the N200, P300, and reward positivity in all analyses. We provide with this research paper an open source website with all the instructions, methods, and software to replicate our findings and to provide researchers with an easy way to use the MUSE EEG system for ERP research. Importantly, our work highlights that with a single computer and a portable EEG system such as the MUSE one can conduct ERP research with ease thus greatly extending the possible use of the ERP methodology to a variety of novel contexts.

FN400 potentials are functionally identical to N400 potentials and reflect semantic processing during recognition testing

PubMed Central

Voss, Joel L.; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

The “F” in FN400 denotes a more frontal scalp distribution relative to the morphologically similar N400 component—a distinction consistent with the hypothesized distinct roles of FN400 in familiarity memory versus N400 in language. However, no direct comparisons have substantiated these assumed dissimilarities. To this end, we manipulated short-term semantic priming during a recognition test. Semantic priming effects on N400 were indistinguishable from memory effects at the same latency, and semantic priming strongly modulated the “FN400,” despite having no influence on familiarity memory. Thus, no evidence suggested either electrophysiological or functional differences between the N400 and FN400, and findings were contrary to the linking of the “FN400” to familiarity. Instead, it appears that semantic/conceptual priming (reflected in the N400) occurs during recognition tests, and is frequently (mis)labeled as FN400 and attributed to familiarity. PMID:20701709

Early holistic face-like processing of Arcimboldo paintings in the right occipito-temporal cortex: evidence from the N170 ERP component.

PubMed

Caharel, Stéphanie; Leleu, Arnaud; Bernard, Christian; Viggiano, Maria-Pia; Lalonde, Robert; Rebaï, Mohamed

2013-11-01

The properties of the face-sensitive N170 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) were explored through an orientation discrimination task using natural faces, objects, and Arcimboldo paintings presented upright or inverted. Because Arcimboldo paintings are composed of non-face objects but have a global face configuration, they provide great control to disentangle high-level face-like or object-like visual processes at the level of the N170, and may help to examine the implication of each hemisphere in the global/holistic processing of face formats. For upright position, N170 amplitudes in the right occipito-temporal region did not differ between natural faces and Arcimboldo paintings but were larger for both of these categories than for objects, supporting the view that as early as the N170 time-window, the right hemisphere is involved in holistic perceptual processing of face-like configurations irrespective of their features. Conversely, in the left hemisphere, N170 amplitudes differed between Arcimboldo portraits and natural faces, suggesting that this hemisphere processes local facial features. For upside-down orientation in both hemispheres, N170 amplitudes did not differ between Arcimboldo paintings and objects, but were reduced for both categories compared to natural faces, indicating that the disruption of holistic processing with inversion leads to an object-like processing of Arcimboldo paintings due to the lack of local facial features. Overall, these results provide evidence that global/holistic perceptual processing of faces and face-like formats involves the right hemisphere as early as the N170 time-window, and that the local processing of face features is rather implemented in the left hemisphere. © 2013.

Controlled categorisation processing in brand extension evaluation by Indo-European language speakers. An ERP study.

PubMed

Fudali-Czyż, Agnieszka; Ratomska, Marta; Cudo, Andrzej; Francuz, Piotr; Kopiś, Natalia; Tużnik, Przemysław

2016-08-15

The purpose of our experiment was to test event-related potentials (ERP) accompanying the process of brand extension evaluation in people speaking Indo-European languages. The experimental procedure consisted of sequential presentations of pairs of stimuli; namely, a beverage brand name and a product name. The products fell into the category of beverages (congruent trials) or clothes (incongruent trials). In the response condition (RC), the participants decided whether they accepted the product as an extension of the brand. In the no-response condition (NRC), the participants' task was to attend the stimuli and try to remember them. In the response condition, the amplitudes of the N270, P300 and N400 components were sensitive to incongruence between the product category and the previously presented brand. However, in the no-response condition, differences emerged only at the level of early P1 and P2 components. Our results suggest that, in people speaking one of the Indo-European languages, the process of categorisation in brand extension evaluation is not automatic. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Graded effects of regularity in language revealed by N400 indices of morphological priming.

PubMed

Kielar, Aneta; Joanisse, Marc F

2010-07-01

Differential electrophysiological effects for regular and irregular linguistic forms have been used to support the theory that grammatical rules are encoded using a dedicated cognitive mechanism. The alternative hypothesis is that language systematicities are encoded probabilistically in a way that does not categorically distinguish rule-like and irregular forms. In the present study, this matter was investigated more closely by focusing specifically on whether the regular-irregular distinction in English past tenses is categorical or graded. We compared the ERP priming effects of regulars (baked-bake), vowel-change irregulars (sang-sing), and "suffixed" irregulars that display a partial regularity (suffixed irregular verbs, e.g., slept-sleep), as well as forms that are related strictly along formal or semantic dimensions. Participants performed a visual lexical decision task with either visual (Experiment 1) or auditory prime (Experiment 2). Stronger N400 priming effects were observed for regular than vowel-change irregular verbs, whereas suffixed irregulars tended to group with regular verbs. Subsequent analyses decomposed early versus late-going N400 priming, and suggested that differences among forms can be attributed to the orthographic similarity of prime and target. Effects of morphological relatedness were observed in the later-going time period, however, we failed to observe true regular-irregular dissociations in either experiment. The results indicate that morphological effects emerge from the interaction of orthographic, phonological, and semantic overlap between words.

Does N200 reflect semantic processing?--An ERP study on Chinese visual word recognition.

PubMed

Du, Yingchun; Zhang, Qin; Zhang, John X

2014-01-01

Recent event-related potential research has reported a N200 response or a negative deflection peaking around 200 ms following the visual presentation of two-character Chinese words. This N200 shows amplitude enhancement upon immediate repetition and there has been preliminary evidence that it reflects orthographic processing but not semantic processing. The present study tested whether this N200 is indeed unrelated to semantic processing with more sensitive measures, including the use of two tasks engaging semantic processing either implicitly or explicitly and the adoption of a within-trial priming paradigm. In Exp. 1, participants viewed repeated, semantically related and unrelated prime-target word pairs as they performed a lexical decision task judging whether or not each target was a real word. In Exp. 2, participants viewed high-related, low-related and unrelated word pairs as they performed a semantic task judging whether each word pair was related in meaning. In both tasks, semantic priming was found from both the behavioral data and the N400 ERP responses. Critically, while repetition priming elicited a clear and large enhancement on the N200 response, semantic priming did not show any modulation effect on the same response. The results indicate that the N200 repetition enhancement effect cannot be explained with semantic priming and that this specific N200 response is unlikely to reflect semantic processing.

Dysfunction in different phases of working memory in schizophrenia: evidence from ERP recordings.

PubMed

Zhao, Yan Li; Tan, Shu Ping; Yang, Fu De; Wang, Li Li; Feng, Wen Feng; Chan, Raymond C K; Gao, Xiao; Zhou, Dong Feng; Li, Bin Bin; Song, Chong Sheng; Fan, Feng Mei; Tan, Yun Long; Zhang, Jin Guo; Wang, Yun Hui; Zou, Yi Zhuang

2011-12-01

The present study combined a time-locked paradigm and high-time-resolution event-related potential (ERP) recordings to examine different phases of working memory, including early visual processing and late memory-related processes of encoding, maintenance, and retrieval, in 67 adults with schizophrenia and 46 healthy controls. Alterations in ERP components were correlated with task performance. Patients performed significantly worse in the working memory task than healthy subjects, although all subjects' accuracy exceeded 80%. During encoding, the N1 and P2 component amplitudes were lower while the P300 amplitude was higher in schizophrenic patients compared to healthy controls. There were no differences between groups with respect to the mean amplitudes of the negative slow waves in the early stage (the first 400 ms) of the maintenance phase. However, in the next 500-ms time window, the patients exhibited a more negative deflection in the middle fronto-central region than the control group. Likewise, a similar pattern was observed in the second 500-ms period in the middle fronto-central region, although the effect was marginally significant. There were no differences between groups in the remaining 1000 ms. During retrieval, the P1, N1 and P2 amplitudes were lower while the P300 amplitude and latency were higher in schizophrenic patients. The present results indicate early visual deficits in the working memory task in adults with schizophrenia. Impairments in the maintenance phase were confined to the late rehearsal stage. The increased P300 amplitude at the fronto-central electrode sites along with the poorer behavioral performance suggests that schizophrenic patients have an inefficient working memory system. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ERP index of the morphological family size effect during word recognition.

PubMed

Kwon, Youan; Nam, Kichun; Lee, Yoonhyoung

2012-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the N400 is affected by the semantic richness of associated neighboring word members or by the density of the orthographic syllable neighborhood. Another purpose of this study was to investigate the source of the different LPC in respect to the semantic richness. To do so, the density of the syllable neighborhood and the size of the morphological family of a word were orthogonally manipulated. ERPs from 24 participants were collected during a go/no-go semantic categorization task. The results showed that the N400 effect was mainly influenced by the density of the syllable neighborhood rather than by the morphological family size. The results also showed that words with a larger morphological family size generate significantly larger LPC than words with a smaller morphological family size. The present study did not support the assumption that the main source of the N400 effect is the semantic richness of the associated neighbors. The present results suggest that the N400 is more sensitive to the density of the syllable neighborhood and LPC is sensitive to the density of the semantic neighborhood reflected by the morphological family size. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Aberrant N400 responses to phonological overlap during rhyme judgements in children at risk for dyslexia.

PubMed

Noordenbos, Mark W; Segers, Eliane; Wagensveld, Barbara; Verhoeven, Ludo

2013-11-06

It is widely accepted that dyslexia is associated with difficulties in phonological awareness and that rhyme awareness in young children can predict later reading success. However, little is known regarding the underlying phonological mechanisms of rhyme awareness in dyslexia, as rhyme awareness is typically assessed using explicit behavioural measures that represent only the endpoint of processing and often lack phonological distracters. We examined event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to auditory word pairs that differed in phonological overlap during a rhyme judgement task given to 6-year-old beginning readers who were at risk for dyslexia (n=30) and typical-reading age-matched controls (n=29). ERPs were recorded in response to word pairs with various types of phonological overlap, including rhyming (e.g., wall-ball), non-rhyming overlapping (e.g., bell-ball) and non-rhyming unrelated (e.g., sock-ball) word pairs. Both groups of participants exhibited N400 responses for basic rhyme judgements vs. unrelated targets. In the typical-reading controls, the neural responses also differed between the rhyming targets and the non-rhyming overlapping targets, whereas neural responses to these targets were similar in the group of children at risk for dyslexia, indicating difficulties in their ability to process similar-sounding, non-rhyming targets. These findings suggest that typical-reading children solve the rhyme judgement task using a more analytical approach, whereas children who are at risk for dyslexia base their judgments on a comparison of overall sound similarity. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Multimodal characterization of the semantic N400 response within a rapid evaluation brain vital sign framework.

PubMed

Ghosh Hajra, Sujoy; Liu, Careesa C; Song, Xiaowei; Fickling, Shaun D; Cheung, Teresa P L; D'Arcy, Ryan C N

2018-06-04

For nearly four decades, the N400 has been an important brainwave marker of semantic processing. It can be recorded non-invasively from the scalp using electrical and/or magnetic sensors, but largely within the restricted domain of research laboratories specialized to run specific N400 experiments. However, there is increasing evidence of significant clinical utility for the N400 in neurological evaluation, particularly at the individual level. To enable clinical applications, we recently reported a rapid evaluation framework known as "brain vital signs" that successfully incorporated the N400 response as one of the core components for cognitive function evaluation. The current study characterized the rapidly evoked N400 response to demonstrate that it shares consistent features with traditional N400 responses acquired in research laboratory settings-thereby enabling its translation into brain vital signs applications. Data were collected from 17 healthy individuals using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG), with analysis of sensor-level effects as well as evaluation of brain sources. Individual-level N400 responses were classified using machine learning to determine the percentage of participants in whom the response was successfully detected. The N400 response was observed in both M/EEG modalities showing significant differences to incongruent versus congruent condition in the expected time range (p < 0.05). Also as expected, N400-related brain activity was observed in the temporal and inferior frontal cortical regions, with typical left-hemispheric asymmetry. Classification robustly confirmed the N400 effect at the individual level with high accuracy (89%), sensitivity (0.88) and specificity (0.90). The brain vital sign N400 characteristics were highly consistent with features of the previously reported N400 responses acquired using traditional laboratory-based experiments. These results provide important evidence supporting

About Edible Restaurants: Conflicts between Syntax and Semantics as Revealed by ERPs

PubMed Central

Kos, Miriam; Vosse, Theo; van den Brink, Daniëlle; Hagoort, Peter

2010-01-01

In order to investigate conflicts between semantics and syntax, we recorded ERPs, while participants read Dutch sentences. Sentences containing conflicts between syntax and semantics (Fred eats in a sandwich…/Fred eats a restaurant…) elicited an N400. These results show that conflicts between syntax and semantics not necessarily lead to P600 effects and are in line with the processing competition account. According to this parallel account the syntactic and semantic processing streams are fully interactive and information from one level can influence the processing at another level. The relative strength of the cues of the processing streams determines which level is affected most strongly by the conflict. The processing competition account maintains the distinction between the N400 as index for semantic processing and the P600 as index for structural processing. PMID:21833277

Bilateral brain reorganization with memantine and constraint-induced aphasia therapy in chronic post-stroke aphasia: An ERP study.

PubMed

Barbancho, Miguel A; Berthier, Marcelo L; Navas-Sánchez, Patricia; Dávila, Guadalupe; Green-Heredia, Cristina; García-Alberca, José M; Ruiz-Cruces, Rafael; López-González, Manuel V; Dawid-Milner, Marc S; Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Lara, J Pablo

2015-01-01

Changes in ERP (P100 and N400) and root mean square (RMS) were obtained during a silent reading task in 28 patients with chronic post-stroke aphasia in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of both memantine and constraint-induced aphasia therapy (CIAT). Participants received memantine/placebo alone (weeks 0-16), followed by drug treatment combined with CIAT (weeks 16-18), and then memantine/placebo alone (weeks 18-20). ERP/RMS values (week 16) decreased more in the memantine group than in the placebo group. During CIAT application (weeks 16-18), improvements in aphasia severity and ERP/RMS values were amplified by memantine and changes remained stable thereafter (weeks 18-20). Changes in ERP/RMS occurred in left and right hemispheres and correlated with gains in language performance. No changes in ERP/RMS were found in a healthy group in two separated evaluations. Our results show that aphasia recovery induced by both memantine alone and in combination with CIAT is indexed by bilateral cortical potentials. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Long-term academic stress increases the late component of error processing: an ERP study.

PubMed

Wu, Jianhui; Yuan, Yiran; Duan, Hongxia; Qin, Shaozheng; Buchanan, Tony W; Zhang, Kan; Zhang, Liang

2014-05-01

Exposure to long-term stress has a variety of consequences on the brain and cognition. Few studies have examined the influence of long-term stress on event related potential (ERP) indices of error processing. The current study investigated how long-term academic stress modulates the error related negativity (Ne or ERN) and the error positivity (Pe) components of error processing. Forty-one male participants undergoing preparation for a major academic examination and 20 non-exam participants completed a Go-NoGo task while ERP measures were collected. The exam group reported higher perceived stress levels and showed increased Pe amplitude compared with the non-exam group. Participants' rating of the importance of the exam was positively associated with the amplitude of Pe, but these effects were not found for the Ne/ERN. These results suggest that long-term academic stress leads to greater motivational assessment of and higher emotional response to errors. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Affective picture processing: An integrative review of ERP findings

PubMed Central

Olofsson, Jonas K.; Nordin, Steven; Sequeira, Henrique; Polich, John

2008-01-01

The review summarizes and integrates findings from 40 years of event-related potential (ERP) studies using pictures that differ in valence (unpleasant-to-pleasant) and arousal (low-to-high) and that are used to elicit emotional processing. Affective stimulus factors primarily modulate ERP component amplitude, with little change in peak latency observed. Arousal effects are consistently obtained, and generally occur at longer latencies. Valence effects are inconsistently reported at several latency ranges, including very early components. Some affective ERP modulations vary with recording methodology, stimulus factors, as well as task-relevance and emotional state. Affective ERPs have been linked theoretically to attention orientation for unpleasant pictures at earlier components (< 300 ms). Enhanced stimulus processing has been associated with memory encoding for arousing pictures of assumed intrinsic motivational relevance, with task-induced differences contributing to emotional reactivity at later components (> 300 ms). Theoretical issues, stimulus factors, task demands, and individual differences are discussed. PMID:18164800

The neural correlates of volitional attention: A combined fMRI and ERP study.

PubMed

Bengson, Jesse J; Kelley, Todd A; Mangun, George R

2015-07-01

Studies of visual-spatial attention typically use instructional cues to direct attention to a relevant location, but in everyday vision, attention is often focused volitionally, in the absence of external signals. Although investigations of cued attention comprise hundreds of behavioral and physiological studies, remarkably few studies of voluntary attention have addressed the challenging question of how spatial attention is initiated and controlled in the absence of external instructions, which we refer to as willed attention. To explore this question, we employed a trial-by-trial spatial attention task using electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI results reveal a unique network of brain regions for willed attention that includes the anterior cingulate cortex, left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and the left and right anterior insula (AI). We also observed two event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with willed attention; one with a frontal distribution occurring 250-350 ms postdecision cue onset (EWAC: Early Willed Attention Component), and another occurring between 400 and 800 ms postdecision-cue onset (WAC: Willed Attention Component). In addition, each ERP component uniquely correlated across subjects with different willed attention-specific sites of BOLD activation. The EWAC was correlated with the willed attention-specific left AI and left MFG activations and the later WAC was correlated only with left AI. These results offer a comprehensive and novel view of the electrophysiological and anatomical profile of willed attention and further illustrate the relationship between scalp-recorded ERPs and the BOLD response. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Implicit Segmentation of a Stream of Syllables Based on Transitional Probabilities: An MEG Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teinonen, Tuomas; Huotilainen, Minna

2012-01-01

Statistical segmentation of continuous speech, i.e., the ability to utilise transitional probabilities between syllables in order to detect word boundaries, is reflected in the brain's auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). The N1 and N400 ERP components are typically enhanced for word onsets compared to random syllables during active…

Test-retest reliability of infant event related potentials evoked by faces.

PubMed

Munsters, N M; van Ravenswaaij, H; van den Boomen, C; Kemner, C

2017-04-05

Reliable measures are required to draw meaningful conclusions regarding developmental changes in longitudinal studies. Little is known, however, about the test-retest reliability of face-sensitive event related potentials (ERPs), a frequently used neural measure in infants. The aim of the current study is to investigate the test-retest reliability of ERPs typically evoked by faces in 9-10 month-old infants. The infants (N=31) were presented with neutral, fearful and happy faces that contained only the lower or higher spatial frequency information. They were tested twice within two weeks. The present results show that the test-retest reliability of the face-sensitive ERP components is moderate (P400 and Nc) to substantial (N290). However, there is low test-retest reliability for the effects of the specific experimental manipulations (i.e. emotion and spatial frequency) on the face-sensitive ERPs. To conclude, in infants the face-sensitive ERP components (i.e. N290, P400 and Nc) show adequate test-retest reliability, but not the effects of emotion and spatial frequency on these ERP components. We propose that further research focuses on investigating elements that might increase the test-retest reliability, as adequate test-retest reliability is necessary to draw meaningful conclusions on individual developmental trajectories of the face-sensitive ERPs in infants. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Dynamic change of ERPs related to selective attention to signals from left and right visual field during head-down tilt

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, Jinhe; Zhao, Lun; Van, Gongdong; Chen, Wenjuan; Ren, Wei; Duan, Ran

To study further the effect of head-down tilt(HDT) on slow positive potential in the event-related potentials(ERPs), the temporal and spatial features of visual ERPs changes during 2 hour HDT(-10 °) were compared with that during HUT(+20°) in 15 normal subjects. The stimuli were consisted of two color LED flashes appeared randomly in left or right visual field(LVF or RVF) with same probability. The subjects were asked to make switch response to target signals(T) differentially: switching to left for T in LVF and to right for T in RVF, ignoring non-target signals(N). Five sets of tests were made during HUT and HDT. ERPs were obtained from 9 locations on scalp. The mean value of the ERPs in the period from 0.32-0.55 s was taken as the amplitude of slow positive potential(P400). The main results were as follows. 1)The mean amplitude of P400 decreased during HDT which was more significant at the 2nd, 3rd and 5th set of tests; 2)spatially, the reduction of mean P400 amplitude during HDT was more significant for signals from RVF and was more significant at posterior and central brain regions than that on frontal locations. As that the positive potential probably reflects the active inhibition activity in the brain during attention process, these data provide further evidence showing that the higher brain function was affected by the simulated weightlessness and that this effect was not only transient but also with interesting spatial characteristics.

Neural correlates of emotional intelligence in a visual emotional oddball task: an ERP study.

PubMed

Raz, Sivan; Dan, Orrie; Zysberg, Leehu

2014-11-01

The present study was aimed at identifying potential behavioral and neural correlates of Emotional Intelligence (EI) by using scalp-recorded Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). EI levels were defined according to both self-report questionnaire and a performance-based ability test. We identified ERP correlates of emotional processing by using a visual-emotional oddball paradigm, in which subjects were confronted with one frequent standard stimulus (a neutral face) and two deviant stimuli (a happy and an angry face). The effects of these faces were then compared across groups with low and high EI levels. The ERP results indicate that participants with high EI exhibited significantly greater mean amplitudes of the P1, P2, N2, and P3 ERP components in response to emotional and neutral faces, at frontal, posterior-parietal and occipital scalp locations. P1, P2 and N2 are considered indexes of attention-related processes and have been associated with early attention to emotional stimuli. The later P3 component has been thought to reflect more elaborative, top-down, emotional information processing including emotional evaluation and memory encoding and formation. These results may suggest greater recruitment of resources to process all emotional and non-emotional faces at early and late processing stages among individuals with higher EI. The present study underscores the usefulness of ERP methodology as a sensitive measure for the study of emotional stimuli processing in the research field of EI. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Matching Heard and Seen Speech: An ERP Study of Audiovisual Word Recognition

PubMed Central

Kaganovich, Natalya; Schumaker, Jennifer; Rowland, Courtney

2016-01-01

Seeing articulatory gestures while listening to speech-in-noise (SIN) significantly improves speech understanding. However, the degree of this improvement varies greatly among individuals. We examined a relationship between two distinct stages of visual articulatory processing and the SIN accuracy by combining a cross-modal repetition priming task with ERP recordings. Participants first heard a word referring to a common object (e.g., pumpkin) and then decided whether the subsequently presented visual silent articulation matched the word they had just heard. Incongruent articulations elicited a significantly enhanced N400, indicative of a mismatch detection at the pre-lexical level. Congruent articulations elicited a significantly larger LPC, indexing articulatory word recognition. Only the N400 difference between incongruent and congruent trials was significantly correlated with individuals’ SIN accuracy improvement in the presence of the talker’s face. PMID:27155219

Processing emotional words in two languages with one brain: ERP and fMRI evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals.

PubMed

Chen, Peiyao; Lin, Jie; Chen, Bingle; Lu, Chunming; Guo, Taomei

2015-10-01

Emotional words in a bilingual's second language (L2) seem to have less emotional impact compared to emotional words in the first language (L1). The present study examined the neural mechanisms of emotional word processing in Chinese-English bilinguals' two languages by using both event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral results show a robust positive word processing advantage in L1 such that responses to positive words were faster and more accurate compared to responses to neutral words and negative words. In L2, emotional words only received higher accuracies than neutral words. In ERPs, positive words elicited a larger early posterior negativity and a smaller late positive component than neutral words in L1, while a trend of reduced N400 component was found for positive words compared to neutral words in L2. In fMRI, reduced activation was found for L1 emotional words in both the left middle occipital gyrus and the left cerebellum whereas increased activation in the left cerebellum was found for L2 emotional words. Altogether, these results suggest that emotional word processing advantage in L1 relies on rapid and automatic attention capture while facilitated semantic retrieval might help processing emotional words in L2. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Brain-Behavior Correlations: Relationships between Mother-Stranger Face Processing and Infants' Behavioral Responses to a Separation from Mother

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swingler, Margaret M.; Sweet, Monica A.; Carver, Leslie J.

2010-01-01

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 6-month-olds (N = 30) as they looked at pictures of their mother's face and a stranger's face. Negative component (Nc) and P400 component responses from the ERP portion of the study were correlated with behavioral responses of the infants during a separation from their mothers. We measured the…

Crystal structures of the Erp protein family members ErpP and ErpC from Borrelia burgdorferi reveal the reason for different affinities for complement regulator factor H.

PubMed

Brangulis, Kalvis; Petrovskis, Ivars; Kazaks, Andris; Akopjana, Inara; Tars, Kaspars

2015-05-01

Borrelia burgdorferi is the causative agent of Lyme disease, which can be acquired after the bite of an infected Ixodes tick. As a strategy to resist the innate immunity and to successfully spread and proliferate, B. burgdorferi expresses a set of outer membrane proteins that are capable of binding complement regulator factor H (CFH), factor H-like protein 1 (CFHL-1) and factor H-related proteins (CFHR) to avoid complement-mediated killing. B. burgdorferi B31 contains three proteins that belong to the Erp (OspE/F-related) protein family and are capable of binding CFH and some CFHRs, namely ErpA, ErpC and ErpP. We have determined the crystal structure of ErpP at 2.53Å resolution and the crystal structure of ErpC at 2.15Å resolution. Recently, the crystal structure of the Erp family member OspE from B. burgdorferi N40 was determined in complex with CFH domains 19-20, revealing the residues involved in the complex formation. Despite the high sequence conservation between ErpA, ErpC, ErpP and the homologous protein OspE (78-80%), the affinity for CFH and CFHRs differs markedly among the Erp family members, suggesting that ErpC may bind only CFHRs but not CFH. A comparison of the binding site in OspE with those of ErpC and ErpP revealed that the extended loop region, which is only observed in the potential binding site of ErpC, plays an important role by preventing the binding of CFH. These results can explain the inability of ErpC to bind CFH, whereas ErpP and ErpA still possess the ability to bind CFH. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The utility of event-related potentials (ERPs) in understanding food-related cognition: A systematic review and recommendations.

PubMed

Carbine, Kaylie A; Rodeback, Rebekah; Modersitzki, Erin; Miner, Marshall; LeCheminant, James D; Larson, Michael J

2018-05-19

Daily dietary decisions have the potential to impact our physical, mental, and emotional health. Event-related potentials (ERPs) can provide insight into cognitive processes, such as attention, working memory, and inhibitory control, that may influence the food-related decisions we make on a daily basis. We conducted a systematic review of the food-related cognition and ERP research in order to summarize the extant literature, identify future research questions, synthesize how food-related ERP components relate to eating habits and appetite, and demonstrate the utility of ERPs in examining food-related cognition. Forty-three articles were systematically extracted. In general, results indicated food cues compared to less palatable foods or neutral cues elicited greater ERP amplitudes reflecting early or late attention allocation (e.g., increased P2, P3, late positive potential amplitudes). Food cues were associated with increased frontocentral P3 and N2 ERP amplitudes compared to neutral or less palatable food cues, suggesting increased recruitment of inhibitory control and conflict monitoring resources. However, there was significant heterogeneity in the literature, as experimental tasks, stimuli, and examined ERP components varied widely across studies, and therefore replication studies are needed. In-depth research is also needed to establish how food-related ERPs differ by BMI groups and relate to real-world eating habits and appetite, in order to establish the ecological validity. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Invariance to Rotation in Depth Measured by Masked Repetition Priming is Dependent on Prime Duration

PubMed Central

Eddy, Marianna D.; Holcomb, Phillip J.

2011-01-01

The current experiment examined invariance to pictures of objects rotated in depth using event-related potentials (ERPs) and masked repetition priming. Specifically we rotated objects 30°, 60° or 150° from their canonical view and, across two experiments, varied the prime duration (50 or 90 milliseconds (ms)). We examined three ERP components, the P/N190, N300 and N400. In Experiment 1, only the 30° rotation condition produced repetition priming effects on the N/P190, N300 and N400. The other rotation conditions only showed repetition priming effects on the early perceptual component, the N/P190. Experiment 2 extended the prime duration to 90 ms to determine whether additional exposure to the prime may produce invariance on the N300 and N400 for the 60° and 150° rotation conditions. Repetition priming effects were found for all rotation conditions across the N/P190, N300 and N400 components. We interpret these results to suggest that whether or not view invariant priming effects are found depends partly on the extent to which representation of an object has been activated. PMID:22005687

Training and testing ERP-BCIs under different mental workload conditions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ke, Yufeng; Wang, Peiyuan; Chen, Yuqian; Gu, Bin; Qi, Hongzhi; Zhou, Peng; Ming, Dong

2016-02-01

Objective. As one of the most popular and extensively studied paradigms of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), event-related potential-based BCIs (ERP-BCIs) are usually built and tested in ideal laboratory settings in most existing studies, with subjects concentrating on stimuli and intentionally avoiding possible distractors. This study is aimed at examining the effect of simultaneous mental activities on ERP-BCIs by manipulating various levels of mental workload during the training and/or testing of an ERP-BCI. Approach. Mental workload was manipulated during the training or testing of a row-column P300-speller to investigate how and to what extent the spelling performance and the ERPs evoked by the oddball stimuli are affected by simultaneous mental workload. Main results. Responses of certain ERP components, temporal-occipital N200 and the late reorienting negativity evoked by the oddball stimuli and the classifiability of ERP features between targets and non-targets decreased with the increase of mental workload encountered by the subject. However, the effect of mental workload on the performance of ERP-BCI was not always negative but depended on the conditions where the ERP-BCI was built and applied. The performance of ERP-BCI built under an ideal lab setting without any irrelevant mental activities declined with the increasing mental workload of the testing data. However, the performance was significantly improved when an ERP-BCI was built under an appropriate mental workload level, compared to that built under speller-only conditions. Significance. The adverse effect of concurrent mental activities may present a challenge for ERP-BCIs trained in ideal lab settings but which are to be used in daily work, especially when users are performing demanding mental processing. On the other hand, the positive effects of the mental workload of the training data suggest that introducing appropriate mental workload during training ERP-BCIs is of potential benefit to the

ERP evidence for hemispheric asymmetries in abstract but not exemplar-specific repetition priming.

PubMed

Küper, Kristina; Liesefeld, Anna M; Zimmer, Hubert D

2015-12-01

Implicit memory retrieval is thought to be exemplar-specific in the right hemisphere (RH) but abstract in the left hemisphere (LH). Yet, conflicting behavioral priming results illustrate that the level at which asymmetries take effect is difficult to pinpoint. In the present divided visual field experiment, we tried to address this issue by analyzing ERPs in addition to behavioral measures. Participants made a natural/artificial decision on lateralized visual objects that were either new, identical repetitions, or different exemplars of studied items. Hemispheric asymmetries did not emerge in either behavioral or late positive complex (LPC) priming effects, but did affect the process of implicit memory retrieval proper as indexed by an early frontal negativity (N350/(F)N400). Whereas exemplar-specific N350/(F)N400 priming effects emerged irrespective of presentation side, abstract implicit memory retrieval of different exemplars was contingent on right visual field presentation and the ensuing initial stimulus processing by the LH. © 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

(C)overt attention and visual speller design in an ERP-based brain-computer interface.

PubMed

Treder, Matthias S; Blankertz, Benjamin

2010-05-28

In a visual oddball paradigm, attention to an event usually modulates the event-related potential (ERP). An ERP-based brain-computer interface (BCI) exploits this neural mechanism for communication. Hitherto, it was unclear to what extent the accuracy of such a BCI requires eye movements (overt attention) or whether it is also feasible for targets in the visual periphery (covert attention). Also unclear was how the visual design of the BCI can be improved to meet peculiarities of peripheral vision such as low spatial acuity and crowding. Healthy participants (N = 13) performed a copy-spelling task wherein they had to count target intensifications. EEG and eye movements were recorded concurrently. First, (c)overt attention was investigated by way of a target fixation condition and a central fixation condition. In the latter, participants had to fixate a dot in the center of the screen and allocate their attention to a target in the visual periphery. Second, the effect of visual speller layout was investigated by comparing the symbol Matrix to an ERP-based Hex-o-Spell, a two-levels speller consisting of six discs arranged on an invisible hexagon. We assessed counting errors, ERP amplitudes, and offline classification performance. There is an advantage (i.e., less errors, larger ERP amplitude modulation, better classification) of overt attention over covert attention, and there is also an advantage of the Hex-o-Spell over the Matrix. Using overt attention, P1, N1, P2, N2, and P3 components are enhanced by attention. Using covert attention, only N2 and P3 are enhanced for both spellers, and N1 and P2 are modulated when using the Hex-o-Spell but not when using the Matrix. Consequently, classifiers rely mainly on early evoked potentials in overt attention and on later cognitive components in covert attention. Both overt and covert attention can be used to drive an ERP-based BCI, but performance is markedly lower for covert attention. The Hex-o-Spell outperforms the

(C)overt attention and visual speller design in an ERP-based brain-computer interface

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background In a visual oddball paradigm, attention to an event usually modulates the event-related potential (ERP). An ERP-based brain-computer interface (BCI) exploits this neural mechanism for communication. Hitherto, it was unclear to what extent the accuracy of such a BCI requires eye movements (overt attention) or whether it is also feasible for targets in the visual periphery (covert attention). Also unclear was how the visual design of the BCI can be improved to meet peculiarities of peripheral vision such as low spatial acuity and crowding. Method Healthy participants (N = 13) performed a copy-spelling task wherein they had to count target intensifications. EEG and eye movements were recorded concurrently. First, (c)overt attention was investigated by way of a target fixation condition and a central fixation condition. In the latter, participants had to fixate a dot in the center of the screen and allocate their attention to a target in the visual periphery. Second, the effect of visual speller layout was investigated by comparing the symbol Matrix to an ERP-based Hex-o-Spell, a two-levels speller consisting of six discs arranged on an invisible hexagon. Results We assessed counting errors, ERP amplitudes, and offline classification performance. There is an advantage (i.e., less errors, larger ERP amplitude modulation, better classification) of overt attention over covert attention, and there is also an advantage of the Hex-o-Spell over the Matrix. Using overt attention, P1, N1, P2, N2, and P3 components are enhanced by attention. Using covert attention, only N2 and P3 are enhanced for both spellers, and N1 and P2 are modulated when using the Hex-o-Spell but not when using the Matrix. Consequently, classifiers rely mainly on early evoked potentials in overt attention and on later cognitive components in covert attention. Conclusions Both overt and covert attention can be used to drive an ERP-based BCI, but performance is markedly lower for covert attention

Emotionally positive stimuli facilitate lexical decisions-an ERP study.

PubMed

Kissler, Johanna; Koessler, Susanne

2011-03-01

The influence of briefly presented positive and negative emotional pictures on lexical decisions on positive, negative and neutral words or pseudowords was investigated. Behavioural reactions were the fastest following all positive stimuli and most accurate for positive words. Stimulus-locked ERPs revealed enhanced early posterior and late parietal attention effects following positive pictures. A small neural affective priming effect was reflected by P3 modulation, indicating more attention allocation to affectively incongruent prime-target pairs. N400 was insensitive to emotion. Response-locked ERPs revealed an early fronto-central negativity from 480ms before reactions to positive words. It was generated in both fronto-central and extra-striate visual areas, demonstrating a contribution of perceptual and, notably, motor preparation processes. Thus, no behavioural and little neural evidence for congruency-driven affective priming with emotional pictures was found, but positive stimuli generally facilitated lexical decisions, not only enhancing perception, but also acting rapidly on response preparation and by-passing full semantic analysis. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Retrieval of concrete words involves more contextual information than abstract words: multiple components for the concreteness effect.

PubMed

Xiao, Xin; Zhao, Di; Zhang, Qin; Guo, Chun-yan

2012-03-01

The current study used the directed forgetting paradigm in implicit and explicit memory to investigate the concreteness effect. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to explore the neural basis of this phenomenon. The behavioral results showed a clear concreteness effect in both implicit and explicit memory tests; participants responded significantly faster to concrete words than to abstract words. The ERP results revealed a concreteness effect (N400) in both the encoding and retrieval phases. In addition, behavioral and ERP results showed an interaction between word concreteness and memory instruction (to-be-forgotten vs. to-be-remembered) in the late epoch of the explicit retrieval phase, revealing a significant concreteness effect only under the to-be-remembered instruction condition. This concreteness effect was realized as an increased P600-like component in response to concrete words relative to abstract words, likely reflecting retrieval of contextual details. The time course of the concreteness effect suggests advantages of concrete words over abstract words due to greater contextual information. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Roadmap for the Development and Validation of ERP Biomarkers in Schizophrenia Research

PubMed Central

Luck, Steven J.; Mathalon, Daniel H.; O'Donnell, Brian F.; Hämäläinen, Matti S.; Spencer, Kevin M.; Javitt, Daniel C.; Uhlhaas, Peter J.

2010-01-01

New efforts to develop treatments for cognitive dysfunction in mental illnesses would benefit enormously from biomarkers that provide sensitive and reliable measures of the neural events underlying cognition. Here we evaluate the promise of event-related potentials (ERPs) as biomarkers of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. We conclude that ERPs have several desirable properties: (a) they provide a direct measure of electrical activity during neurotransmission; (b) their high temporal resolutions makes it possible to measure neural synchrony and oscillations; (c) they are relatively inexpensive and convenient to record; (d) animal models are readily available for several ERP components; (e) decades of research has established the sensitivity and reliability of ERP measures in psychiatric illnesses; and (f) feasibility of large N (>500) multi-site studies has been demonstrated for key measures. Consequently, ERPs may be useful for identifying endophenotypes and defining treatment targets, for evaluating new compounds in animals and in humans, and for identifying individuals who are good candidates for early interventions or for specific treatments. However, several challenges must be overcome before ERPs gain widespread use as biomarkers in schizophrenia research, and we make several recommendations for the research that is necessary to develop and validate ERP-based biomarkers that can have a real impact on treatment development. PMID:21111401

Estimating workload using EEG spectral power and ERPs in the n-back task

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Hogervorst, Maarten A.; van Erp, Jan B. F.; Heffelaar, Tobias; Zimmerman, Patrick H.; Oostenveld, Robert

2012-08-01

Previous studies indicate that both electroencephalogram (EEG) spectral power (in particular the alpha and theta band) and event-related potentials (ERPs) (in particular the P300) can be used as a measure of mental work or memory load. We compare their ability to estimate workload level in a well-controlled task. In addition, we combine both types of measures in a single classification model to examine whether this results in higher classification accuracy than either one alone. Participants watched a sequence of visually presented letters and indicated whether or not the current letter was the same as the one (n instances) before. Workload was varied by varying n. We developed different classification models using ERP features, frequency power features or a combination (fusion). Training and testing of the models simulated an online workload estimation situation. All our ERP, power and fusion models provide classification accuracies between 80% and 90% when distinguishing between the highest and the lowest workload condition after 2 min. For 32 out of 35 participants, classification was significantly higher than chance level after 2.5 s (or one letter) as estimated by the fusion model. Differences between the models are rather small, though the fusion model performs better than the other models when only short data segments are available for estimating workload.

Face repetition detection and social interest: An ERP study in adults with and without Williams syndrome.

PubMed

Key, Alexandra P; Dykens, Elisabeth M

2016-12-01

The present study examined possible neural mechanisms underlying increased social interest in persons with Williams syndrome (WS). Visual event-related potentials (ERPs) during passive viewing were used to compare incidental memory traces for repeated vs. single presentations of previously unfamiliar social (faces) and nonsocial (houses) images in 26 adults with WS and 26 typical adults. Results indicated that participants with WS developed familiarity with the repeated faces and houses (frontal N400 response), but only typical adults evidenced the parietal old/new effect (previously associated with stimulus recollection) for the repeated faces. There was also no evidence of exceptional salience of social information in WS, as ERP markers of memory for repeated faces vs. houses were not significantly different. Thus, while persons with WS exhibit behavioral evidence of increased social interest, their processing of social information in the absence of specific instructions may be relatively superficial. The ERP evidence of face repetition detection in WS was independent of IQ and the earlier perceptual differentiation of social vs. nonsocial stimuli. Large individual differences in ERPs of participants with WS may provide valuable information for understanding the WS phenotype and have relevance for educational and treatment purposes.

Influence of cognitive control and mismatch on the N2 component of the ERP: A review

PubMed Central

Folstein, Jonathan R.; Van Petten, Cyma

2008-01-01

Recent years have seen an explosion of research on the N2 component of the event-related potential, a negative wave peaking between 200 and 350 ms after stimulus onset. This research has focused on the influence of “cognitive control,” a concept that covers strategic monitoring and control of motor responses. However, rich research traditions focus on attention and novelty or mismatch as determinants of N2 amplitude. We focus on paradigms that elicit N2 components with an anterior scalp distribution, namely, cognitive control, novelty, and sequential matching, and argue that the anterior N2 should be divided into separate control- and mismatch-related subcomponents. We also argue that the oddball N2 belongs in the family of attention-related N2 components that, in the visual modality, have a posterior scalp distribution. We focus on the visual modality for which components with frontocentral and more posterior scalp distributions can be readily distinguished. PMID:17850238

Attentional Modulation of Change Detection ERP Components by Peripheral Retro-Cueing

PubMed Central

Pazo-Álvarez, Paula; Roca-Fernández, Adriana; Gutiérrez-Domínguez, Francisco-Javier; Amenedo, Elena

2017-01-01

Change detection is essential for visual perception and performance in our environment. However, observers often miss changes that should be easily noticed. A failure in any of the processes involved in conscious detection (encoding the pre-change display, maintenance of that information within working memory, and comparison of the pre and post change displays) can lead to change blindness. Given that unnoticed visual changes in a scene can be easily detected once attention is drawn to them, it has been suggested that attention plays an important role on visual awareness. In the present study, we used behavioral and electrophysiological (ERPs) measures to study whether the manipulation of retrospective spatial attention affects performance and modulates brain activity related to the awareness of a change. To that end, exogenous peripheral cues were presented during the delay period (retro-cues) between the first and the second array using a one-shot change detection task. Awareness of a change was associated with a posterior negative amplitude shift around 228–292 ms (“Visual Awareness Negativity”), which was independent of retrospective spatial attention, as it was elicited to both validly and invalidly cued change trials. Change detection was also associated with a larger positive deflection around 420–580 ms (“Late Positivity”), but only when the peripheral retro-cues correctly predicted the change. Present results confirm that the early and late ERP components related to change detection can be functionally dissociated through manipulations of exogenous retro-cueing using a change blindness paradigm. PMID:28270759

Tracking lexical consolidation with ERPs: Lexical and semantic-priming effects on N400 and LPC responses to newly-learned words.

PubMed

Bakker, Iske; Takashima, Atsuko; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2015-12-01

Novel words can be recalled immediately and after little exposure, but require a post-learning consolidation period to show word-like behaviour such as lexical competition. This pattern is thought to reflect a qualitative shift from episodic to lexical representations. However, several studies have reported immediate effects of meaningful novel words on semantic processing, suggesting that integration of novel word meanings may not require consolidation. The current study synthesises and extends these findings by showing a dissociation between lexical and semantic effects on the electrophysiological (N400, LPC) response to novel words. The difference in N400 amplitude between novel and existing words (a lexical effect) decreased significantly after a 24-h consolidation period, providing novel support for the hypothesis that offline consolidation aids lexicalisation. In contrast, novel words preceded by semantically related primes elicited a more positive LPC response (a semantic-priming effect) both before and after consolidation, indicating that certain semantic effects can be observed even when words have not been fully lexicalised. We propose that novel meanings immediately start to contribute to semantic processing, but that the underlying neural processes may shift from strategic to more automatic with consolidation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

ERP evidence for different strategies in the processing of case markers in native speakers and non-native learners

PubMed Central

Mueller, Jutta L; Hirotani, Masako; Friederici, Angela D

2007-01-01

Background The present experiments were designed to test how the linguistic feature of case is processed in Japanese by native and non-native listeners. We used a miniature version of Japanese as a model to compare sentence comprehension mechanisms in native speakers and non-native learners who had received training until they had mastered the system. In the first experiment we auditorily presented native Japanese speakers with sentences containing incorrect double nominatives and incorrect double accusatives, and with correct sentences. In the second experiment we tested trained non-natives with the same material. Based on previous research in German we expected an N400-P600 biphasic ERP response with specific modulations depending on the violated case and whether the listeners were native or non-native. Results For native Japanese participants the general ERP response to the case violations was an N400-P600 pattern. Double accusatives led to an additional enhancement of the P600 amplitude. For the learners a native-like P600 was present for double accusatives and for double nominatives. The additional negativity, however, was present in learners only for double nominative violations, and it was characterized by a different topographical distribution. Conclusion The results indicate that native listeners use case markers for thematic as well as syntactic structure building during incremental sentence interpretation. The modulation of the P600 component for double accusatives possibly reflects case specific syntactic restrictions in Japanese. For adult language learners later processes, as reflected in the P600, seem to be more native-like compared to earlier processes. The anterior distribution of the negativity and its selective emergence for canonical sentences were taken to suggest that the non-native learners resorted to a rather formal processing strategy whereby they relied to a large degree on the phonologically salient nominative case marker. PMID:17331265

Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Semantic Processing in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An ERP Study.

PubMed

Coderre, Emily L; Chernenok, Mariya; Gordon, Barry; Ledoux, Kerry

2017-03-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulties with language, particularly higher-level functions like semantic integration. Yet some studies indicate that semantic processing of non-linguistic stimuli is not impaired, suggesting a language-specific deficit in semantic processing. Using a semantic priming task, we compared event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to lexico-semantic processing (written words) and visuo-semantic processing (pictures) in adults with ASD and adults with typical development (TD). The ASD group showed successful lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing, indicated by similar N400 effects between groups for word and picture stimuli. However, differences in N400 latency and topography in word conditions suggested different lexico-semantic processing mechanisms: an expectancy-based strategy for the TD group but a controlled post-lexical integration strategy for the ASD group.

Are objects the same as groups? ERP correlates of spatial attentional guidance by irrelevant feature similarity.

PubMed

Kasai, Tetsuko; Moriya, Hiroki; Hirano, Shingo

2011-07-05

It has been proposed that the most fundamental units of attentional selection are "objects" that are grouped according to Gestalt factors such as similarity or connectedness. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that object-based attention is associated with modulations of the visual-evoked N1 component, which reflects an early cortical mechanism that is shared with spatial attention. However, these studies only examined the case of perceptually continuous objects. The present study examined the case of separate objects that are grouped according to feature similarity (color, shape) by indexing lateralized potentials at posterior sites in a sustained-attention task that involved bilateral stimulus arrays. A behavioral object effect was found only for task-relevant shape similarity. Electrophysiological results indicated that attention was guided to the task-irrelevant side of the visual field due to achromatic-color similarity in N1 (155-205 ms post-stimulus) and early N2 (210-260 ms) and due to shape similarity in early N2 and late N2 (280-400 ms) latency ranges. These results are discussed in terms of selection mechanisms and object/group representations. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

What does the brain of children with developmental dyslexia tell us about reading improvement? ERP evidence from an intervention study

PubMed Central

Hasko, Sandra; Groth, Katarina; Bruder, Jennifer; Bartling, Jürgen; Schulte-Körne, Gerd

2014-01-01

Intervention is key to managing developmental dyslexia (DD), but not all children with DD benefit from treatment. Some children improve (improvers, IMP), whereas others do not improve (non-improvers, NIMP). Neurobiological differences between IMP and NIMP have been suggested, but studies comparing IMP and NIMP in childhood are missing. The present study examined whether ERP patterns change with treatment and differ between IMP and NIMP. We investigated the ERPs of 28 children with DD and 25 control children (CON) while performing a phonological lexical decision (PLD) task before and after a 6-month intervention. After intervention children with DD were divided into IMP (n = 11) and NIMP (n = 17). In the PLD–task children were visually presented with words, pseudohomophones, pseudowords, and false fonts and had to decide whether the presented stimulus sounded like an existing German word or not. Prior to intervention IMP showed higher N300 amplitudes over fronto-temporal electrodes compared to NIMP and CON and N400 amplitudes were attenuated in both IMP and NIMP compared to CON. After intervention N300 amplitudes of IMP were comparable to those of CON and NIMP. This suggests that the N300, which has been related to phonological access of orthographic stimuli and integration of orthographic and phonological representations, might index a compensatory mechanism or precursor that facilitates reading improvement. The N400, which is thought to reflect grapheme-phoneme conversion or the access to the orthographic lexicon increased in IMP from pre to post and was comparable to CON after intervention. Correlations between N300 amplitudes pre, growth in reading ability and N400 amplitudes post indicated that higher N300 amplitudes might be important for reading improvement and increase in N400 amplitudes. The results suggest that children with DD, showing the same cognitive profile might differ regarding their neuronal profile which could further influence reading

Influence of education level on design-induced N170 and P300 components of event related potentials in the human brain.

PubMed

Begum, Tahamina; Reza, Faruque; Ahmed, Izmer; Abdullah, Jafri Malin

2014-03-01

Simple geometric and organic shapes and their arrangement are being used in different neuropsychology tests for the assessment of cognitive function, special memory and also for the therapy purpose in different patient groups. Until now there is no electrophysiological evidence of cognitive function determination for simple geometric, organic shapes and their arrangement. Then the main objective of this study is to know the cortical processing and amplitude, latency of visual induced N170 and P300 event related potential components on different geometric, organic shapes and their arrangement and different educational influence on it, which is worthwhile to know for the early and better treatment for those patient groups. While education influenced on cognitive function by using auditory oddball task, little is known about the influence of education on cognitive function induced by visual attention task in case of the choice of geometric, organic shapes and their arrangements. Using a 128-electrode sensor net, we studied the responses of the choice of the different geometric and organic shapes randomly in experiment 1 and their arrangements in experiment 2 in the high, medium and low education groups. In both experiments, subjects push the button "1" or "2" if like or dislike, respectively. Total 45 healthy subjects (15 in each group) were recruited. ERPs were measured from 11 electrode sites and analyzed to see the evoked N170/N240 and P300 ERP components. There were no differences between like and dislike in amplitudes even in latencies in every stimulus in both experiments. We fixed geometric shapes and organic shapes stimuli only, not like and dislike. Upon the stimulus types, N170 ERP component was found instead of N240, in occipito-temporal (T5, T6, O1 and O2) locations where the amplitude is the highest at O2 location and P300 was distributed in the central (Cz and Pz) locations in both experiments in all groups. In experiment 1, significant low amplitude and

Spatiotemporal patterns of ERP based on combined ICA-LORETA analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Jiacai; Guo, Taomei; Xu, Yaqin; Zhao, Xiaojie; Yao, Li

2007-03-01

In contrast to the FMRI methods widely used up to now, this method try to understand more profoundly how the brain systems work under sentence processing task map accurately the spatiotemporal patterns of activity of the large neuronal populations in the human brain from the analysis of ERP data recorded on the brain scalp. In this study, an event-related brain potential (ERP) paradigm to record the on-line responses to the processing of sentences is chosen as an example. In order to give attention to both utilizing the ERPs' temporal resolution of milliseconds and overcoming the insensibility of cerebral location ERP sources, we separate these sources in space and time based on a combined method of independent component analysis (ICA) and low-resolution tomography (LORETA) algorithms. ICA blindly separate the input ERP data into a sum of temporally independent and spatially fixed components arising from distinct or overlapping brain or extra-brain sources. And then the spatial maps associated with each ICA component are analyzed, with use of LORETA to uniquely locate its cerebral sources throughout the full brain according to the assumption that neighboring neurons are simultaneously and synchronously activated. Our results show that the cerebral computation mechanism underlies content words reading is mediated by the orchestrated activity of several spatially distributed brain sources located in the temporal, frontal, and parietal areas, and activate at distinct time intervals and are grouped into different statistically independent components. Thus ICA-LORETA analysis provides an encouraging and effective method to study brain dynamics from ERP.

A Comparison of Semantic and Syntactic Event Related Potentials Generated by Children and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atchley, Ruth Ann; Rice, Mabel L.; Betz, Stacy K.; Kwasny, Kristin M.; Sereno, Joan A.; Jongman, Allard

2006-01-01

The present study employs event related potentials (ERPs) to verify the utility of using electrophysiological measures to study developmental questions within the field of language comprehension. Established ERP components (N400 and P600) that reflect semantic and syntactic processing were examined. Fifteen adults and 14 children (ages 8-13)…

Audio-visual speech perception: a developmental ERP investigation

PubMed Central

Knowland, Victoria CP; Mercure, Evelyne; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette; Dick, Fred; Thomas, Michael SC

2014-01-01

Being able to see a talking face confers a considerable advantage for speech perception in adulthood. However, behavioural data currently suggest that children fail to make full use of these available visual speech cues until age 8 or 9. This is particularly surprising given the potential utility of multiple informational cues during language learning. We therefore explored this at the neural level. The event-related potential (ERP) technique has been used to assess the mechanisms of audio-visual speech perception in adults, with visual cues reliably modulating auditory ERP responses to speech. Previous work has shown congruence-dependent shortening of auditory N1/P2 latency and congruence-independent attenuation of amplitude in the presence of auditory and visual speech signals, compared to auditory alone. The aim of this study was to chart the development of these well-established modulatory effects over mid-to-late childhood. Experiment 1 employed an adult sample to validate a child-friendly stimulus set and paradigm by replicating previously observed effects of N1/P2 amplitude and latency modulation by visual speech cues; it also revealed greater attenuation of component amplitude given incongruent audio-visual stimuli, pointing to a new interpretation of the amplitude modulation effect. Experiment 2 used the same paradigm to map cross-sectional developmental change in these ERP responses between 6 and 11 years of age. The effect of amplitude modulation by visual cues emerged over development, while the effect of latency modulation was stable over the child sample. These data suggest that auditory ERP modulation by visual speech represents separable underlying cognitive processes, some of which show earlier maturation than others over the course of development. PMID:24176002

Goal impact influences the evaluative component of performance monitoring: Evidence from ERPs.

PubMed

Severo, Mario Carlo; Walentowska, Wioleta; Moors, Agnes; Pourtois, Gilles

2017-10-01

Successful performance monitoring (PM) requires continuous assessment of context and action outcomes. Electrophysiological studies have reliably identified event-related potential (ERP) markers for evaluative feedback processing during PM: the Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and P3 components. The functional significance of FRN remains debated in the literature, with recent research suggesting that feedback's goal relevance can account for FRN (amplitude) modulation, apart from its valence or expectedness alone. Extending this account, the present study assessed whether graded differentiations in feedback's relevance or importance to one's goal (referred to as goal impact) would influence PM at the FRN (and P3) level. To this end, we ran a within-subject crossover design experiment in which 40 participants completed two standard cognitive control tasks (Go/No Go and Simon), while 64-channel electroencephalography was recorded. Critically, both tasks entailed similar reward processing but systematically varied in goal impact assignment (high vs. low), manipulated through their supposed diagnosticity for daily life functioning and activation of social comparison. ERP results showed that goal impact reliably modulated FRN in a general manner. Irrespective of feedback valence, it was overall less negative in the high compared to the low impact condition, suggesting a general decrease in feedback monitoring in the former compared to the latter condition. These findings lend support to the idea that PM is best conceived operating not solely based on motor cues, but is shaped by motivational demands. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mass counts: ERP correlates of non-adjacent dependency learning under different exposure conditions.

PubMed

Citron, Francesca M M; Oberecker, Regine; Friederici, Angela D; Mueller, Jutta L

2011-01-10

Miniature language learning can serve to model real language learning as high proficiency can be reached after very little exposure. In a previous study by Mueller et al. [18] German participants acquired non-adjacent syntactic dependencies by mere exposure to correct Italian sentences, but their ERP pattern differed from the one shown by native speakers. The present study follows up on that experiment using a similar design and material and is focused on two important issues: the influence of acoustic cues in the material and the impact of the learning procedure. With respect to the latter we compared alternating learning and test phases to a continuous learning and test phase. In addition, a splicing procedure eliminated prosodic cues in order to ensure that non-adjacent dependencies were learned instead of adjacent ones. Results for the continuous phase design showed a native-like biphasic ERP pattern, an N400 followed by a left-focused positivity. In the alternating design behavioural accuracy was lower and only an N400 was found. The results suggest an advantage of continuous learning phases for adult learners, possibly due to the absence of ungrammatical items present in the test phases in the alternating learning procedure. Furthermore, the replication of the earlier study with prosodically controlled material adds evidence to the general finding that syntactic non-adjacent dependencies can be learned from mere exposure to correct examples. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Early ERP Signature of Hearing Impairment in Visual Rhyme Judgment

PubMed Central

Classon, Elisabet; Rudner, Mary; Johansson, Mikael; Rönnberg, Jerker

2013-01-01

Postlingually acquired hearing impairment (HI) is associated with changes in the representation of sound in semantic long-term memory. An indication of this is the lower performance on visual rhyme judgment tasks in conditions where phonological and orthographic cues mismatch, requiring high reliance on phonological representations. In this study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used for the first time to investigate the neural correlates of phonological processing in visual rhyme judgments in participants with acquired HI and normal hearing (NH). Rhyme task word pairs rhymed or not and had matching or mismatching orthography. In addition, the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) was manipulated to be either long (800 ms) or short (50 ms). Long ISIs allow for engagement of explicit, top-down processes, while short ISIs limit the involvement of such mechanisms. We hypothesized lower behavioral performance and N400 and N2 deviations in HI in the mismatching rhyme judgment conditions, particularly in short ISI. However, the results showed a different pattern. As expected, behavioral performance in the mismatch conditions was lower in HI than in NH in short ISI, but ERPs did not differ across groups. In contrast, HI performed on a par with NH in long ISI. Further, HI, but not NH, showed an amplified N2-like response in the non-rhyming, orthographically mismatching condition in long ISI. This was also the rhyme condition in which participants in both groups benefited the most from the possibility to engage top-down processes afforded with the longer ISI. Taken together, these results indicate an early ERP signature of HI in this challenging phonological task, likely reflecting use of a compensatory strategy. This strategy is suggested to involve increased reliance on explicit mechanisms such as articulatory recoding and grapheme-to-phoneme conversion. PMID:23653613

Priming deficiency in male subjects at risk for alcoholism: the N4 during a lexical decision task.

PubMed

Roopesh, Bangalore N; Rangaswamy, Madhavi; Kamarajan, Chella; Chorlian, David B; Stimus, Arthur; Bauer, Lance O; Rohrbaugh, John; O'Connor, Sean J; Kuperman, Samuel; Schuckit, Marc; Porjesz, Bernice

2009-12-01

While there is extensive literature on the relationship between the P3 component of event-related potentials (ERPs) and risk for alcoholism, there are few published studies regarding other potentially important ERP components. One important candidate is the N4(00) component in the context of semantic processing, as abnormalities in this component have been reported for adult alcoholics. A semantic priming task was administered to nonalcohol dependent male offspring (18 to 25 years) of alcoholic fathers [high risk (HR) n = 23] and nonalcoholic fathers [low risk (LR) n = 28] to study whether the 2 groups differ in terms of the N4 component. Subjects were presented with 150 words and 150 nonwords. Among the words, 50 words (primed) were preceded by their antonyms (prime, n = 50), whereas the remaining 50 words were unprimed. For the analysis, N4 amplitude and latency as well as behavioral measures for the primed and unprimed words were considered. A significant interaction effect was observed between semantic condition and group, where HR subjects did not show N4 attenuation for primed stimuli. The lack of N4 attenuation to primed stimuli and/or inability to differentiate between primed and unprimed stimuli, without latency and reaction time being affected, suggest deficits in semantic priming, especially in semantic expectancy and/or postlexical semantic processing in HR male offspring. Further, it indicates that it might be an electrophysiological endophenotype that reflects genetic vulnerability to develop alcoholism.

Relationship between neural response and adaptation selectivity to form and color: an ERP study.

PubMed

Rentzeperis, Ilias; Nikolaev, Andrey R; Kiper, Daniel C; van Leeuwen, Cees

2012-01-01

Adaptation is widely used as a tool for studying selectivity to visual features. In these studies it is usually assumed that the loci of feature selective neural responses and adaptation coincide. We used an adaptation paradigm to investigate the relationship between response and adaptation selectivity in event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs were evoked by the presentation of colored Glass patterns in a form discrimination task. Response selectivities to form and, to some extent, color of the patterns were reflected in the C1 and N1 ERP components. Adaptation selectivity to color was reflected in N1 and was followed by a late (300-500 ms after stimulus onset) effect of form adaptation. Thus for form, response and adaptation selectivity were manifested in non-overlapping intervals. These results indicate that adaptation and response selectivity can be associated with different processes. Therefore, inferring selectivity from an adaptation paradigm requires analysis of both adaptation and neural response data.

The component structure of ERP subsequent memory effects in the Von Restorff paradigm and the word frequency effect in recall.

PubMed

Kamp, Siri-Maria; Brumback, Ty; Donchin, Emanuel

2013-11-01

We examined the degree to which ERP components elicited by items that are isolated from their context, either by their font size ("size isolates") or by their frequency of usage, are correlated with subsequent immediate recall. Study lists contained (a) 15 words including a size isolate, (b) 14 high frequency (HF) words with one low frequency word ("LF isolate"), or (c) 14 LF words with one HF word. We used spatiotemporal PCA to quantify ERP components. We replicated previously reported P300 subsequent memory effects for size isolates and found additional correlations with recall in the novelty P3, a right lateralized positivity, and a left lateralized slow wave that was distinct from the slow wave correlated with recall for nonisolates. LF isolates also showed evidence of a P300 subsequent memory effect and also elicited the left lateralized subsequent memory effect, supporting a role of distinctiveness in word frequency effects in recall. Copyright © 2013 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Prenatal Cocaine Exposure Impacts Language and Reading Into Late Adolescence: Behavioral and ERP Evidence.

PubMed

Landi, Nicole; Avery, Trey; Crowley, Michael J; Wu, Jia; Mayes, Linda

2017-01-01

Extant research documents impaired language among children with prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) relative to nondrug exposed (NDE) children, suggesting that cocaine alters development of neurobiological systems that support language. The current study examines behavioral and neural (electrophysiological) indices of language function in older adolescents. Specifically, we compare performance of PCE (N = 59) and NDE (N = 51) adolescents on a battery of cognitive and linguistic assessments that tap word reading, reading comprehension, semantic and grammatical processing, and IQ. In addition, we examine event related potential (ERP) responses in in a subset of these children across three experimental tasks that examine word level phonological processing (rhyme priming), word level semantic processing (semantic priming), and sentence level semantic processing (semantic anomaly). Findings reveal deficits across a number of reading and language assessments, after controlling for socioeconomic status and exposure to other substances. Additionally, ERP data reveal atypical orthography to phonology mapping (reduced N1/P2 response) and atypical rhyme and semantic processing (N400 response). These findings suggest that PCE continues to impact language and reading skills into the late teenage years.

The Difficulty in Finding Relationships Between ERPs and Clinical Symptoms of Schizophrenia.

PubMed

Ford, Judith M

2018-01-01

It has been surprisingly difficult to find associations between neural signatures of schizophrenia and the symptoms that define it. That is, many of the legacy components of the event-related potential (ERP)- P50, N100, P200, P300-are reduced in patients with schizophrenia, in first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, in schizophrenia patients early in their illness, and even in people at clinical high risk for schizophrenia. Nevertheless, these ERP components tend to be relatively insensitive to symptoms. This might be due to a number of reasons. First, this could reflect a lack of relationship, a failure to report disappointing findings, or a failure to test for relationships. Second, many ERP studies were not designed to be sensitive to symptoms or to the mechanisms that might underlie them. Third, assessing symptoms is sometimes dependent on the patients' ability to describe unfathomable experiences and the clinicians' ability to understand and interpret them. Fourth, medications and comorbidities may decouple the symptoms from the neurobiology. Finally, we must also consider the possibility that the schizophrenia diagnosis breeds truer than the symptoms it comprises.

An ERP study on hostile attribution bias in aggressive and nonaggressive individuals.

PubMed

Gagnon, Jean; Aubin, Mercédès; Emond, Fannie Carrier; Derguy, Sophie; Brochu, Alex Fernet; Bessette, Monique; Jolicoeur, Pierre

2017-05-01

Hostile attribution bias (e.g., tendency to interpret the intention of others as hostile in ambiguous social contexts) has been associated with impulsive aggression in adults, but the results are mixed and the complete sequence of hostile inferential processes leading to aggression has not been investigated yet. The goal of this event-related brain potentials (ERPs) study was to track the neural activity associated with the violation of expectations about hostile versus nonhostile intentions in aggressive and nonaggressive individuals and examine how this neural activity relates to self-reported hostile attributional bias and impulsive aggression in real life. To this end, scenarios with a hostile versus nonhostile social context followed by a character's ambiguous aversive behavior were presented to readers, and ERPs to critical words that specified the hostile versus nonhostile intent behind the behavior were analysed. Thirty-seven aggressive and fifty nonaggressive individuals participated in the study. The presentation of a critical word that violated hostile expectation caused an N400 response that was significantly larger in aggressive than nonaggressive individuals. Results also showed an enhanced late positive potential-like component in aggressive individuals when hostile intention scenarios took place in a nonhostile context, which is associated with impulsive aggression in real life even after having controlled for the effect of self-reported hostile attributional bias. The Hostile Expectancy Violation paradigm evaluated in this study represents a promising tool to investigate the relationship between the online processing of hostile intent in others and impulsive aggression. Aggr. Behav. 43:217-229, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Risk assessment for enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementations: a fault tree analysis approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zeng, Yajun; Skibniewski, Miroslaw J.

2013-08-01

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system implementations are often characterised with large capital outlay, long implementation duration, and high risk of failure. In order to avoid ERP implementation failure and realise the benefits of the system, sound risk management is the key. This paper proposes a probabilistic risk assessment approach for ERP system implementation projects based on fault tree analysis, which models the relationship between ERP system components and specific risk factors. Unlike traditional risk management approaches that have been mostly focused on meeting project budget and schedule objectives, the proposed approach intends to address the risks that may cause ERP system usage failure. The approach can be used to identify the root causes of ERP system implementation usage failure and quantify the impact of critical component failures or critical risk events in the implementation process.

ERP Go/NoGo condition effects are better detected with separate PCAs.

PubMed

Barry, Robert J; De Blasio, Frances M; Fogarty, Jack S; Karamacoska, Diana

2016-08-01

We explored the separation of Go and NoGo effects in the ERP components elicited in an equiprobable Go/NoGo task, using different forms of temporal Principal Components Analysis (PCA). Following exploratory simulation studies assessing the PCA impact of latency jitter and between-condition latency differences in the P3 latency range, an empirical study compared results of a Combined PCA carried out using both Go and NoGo ERPs together as input, with those from two Separate PCAs carried out on the Go and NoGo ERPs separately. The simulation studies indicated that Separate PCAs provide adequate component recovery in the presence of P3 latency jitter, and that Combined PCAs provide good separation of components only when systematic condition-related latency differences are sufficiently large (here ~110ms). In the empirical data, broadly-similar components were obtained from the Combined and Separate PCAs, supporting previous findings from Combined PCA investigations, and the consequent interpretations of the sequential processing involved. However, the Separate PCAs generated latency differences for components in the Go and NoGo processing chains that better matched the late Go/NoGo ERP peaks, and produced better-defined and larger components that fitted the stages in a hypothetical processing schema developed for this paradigm. Overall, the Separate PCAs yielded a better partitioning of the ERP variance associated with the Go and NoGo conditions, and should be considered as the first choice in future investigations if systematic component or subcomponent latency differences are present or suspected. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Influence of long-term Sahaja Yoga meditation practice on emotional processing in the brain: An ERP study.

PubMed

Reva, N V; Pavlov, S V; Loktev, K V; Korenyok, V V; Aftanas, L I

2014-12-05

Despite growing interest in meditation as a tool for alternative therapy of stress-related and psychosomatic diseases, brain mechanisms of beneficial influences of meditation practice on health and quality of life are still unclear. We propose that the key point is a persistent change in emotional functioning, specifically the modulation of the early appraisal of motivational significance of events. The main aim was to study the effects of long-term meditation practice on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during affective picture viewing. ERPs were recorded in 20 long-term Sahaja Yoga meditators and 20 control subjects without prior experience in meditation. The meditators' mid-latency (140-400ms) ERPs were attenuated for both positive and negative pictures (i.e. there were no arousal-related increases in ERP positivity) and this effect was more prominent over the right hemisphere. However, we found no differences in the long latency (400-800ms) responses to emotional images, associated with meditation practice. In addition we found stronger ERP negativity in the time window 200-300ms for meditators compared to the controls, regardless of picture valence. We assume that long-term meditation practice enhances frontal top-down control over fast automatic salience detection, based on amygdala functions. Copyright © 2014 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Stepwise emergence of the face-sensitive N170 event-related potential component.

PubMed

Jemel, Boutheina; Schuller, Anne-Marie; Cheref-Khan, Yasémine; Goffaux, Valérie; Crommelinck, Marc; Bruyer, Raymond

2003-11-14

The present study used a parametric design to characterize early event-related potentials (ERP) to face stimuli embedded in gradually decreasing random noise levels. For both N170 and the vertex positive potential (VPP) there was a linear increase in amplitude and decrease in latency with decreasing levels of noise. In contrast, the earlier visual P1 component was stable across noise levels. The P1/N170 dissociation suggests not only a functional dissociation between low and high-level visual processing of faces but also that the N170 reflects the integration of sensorial information into a unitary representation. In addition, the N170/VPP association supports the view that they reflect the same processes operating when viewing faces.

Is the time course of lexical activation and competition in spoken word recognition affected by adult aging? An event-related potential (ERP) study.

PubMed

Hunter, Cynthia R

2016-10-01

Adult aging is associated with decreased accuracy for recognizing speech, particularly in noisy backgrounds and for high neighborhood density words, which sound similar to many other words. In the current study, the time course of neighborhood density effects in young and older adults was compared using event-related potentials (ERP) and behavioral responses in a lexical decision task for spoken words and nonwords presented either in quiet or in noise. Target items sounded similar either to many or to few other words (neighborhood density) but were balanced for the frequency of their component sounds (phonotactic probability). Behavioral effects of density were similar across age groups, but the event-related potential effects of density differed as a function of age group. For young adults, density modulated the amplitude of both the N400 and the later P300 or late positive complex (LPC). For older adults, density modulated only the amplitude of the P300/LPC. Thus, spreading activation to the semantics of lexical neighbors, indexed by the N400 density effect, appears to be reduced or delayed in adult aging. In contrast, effects of density on P300/LPC amplitude were present in both age groups, perhaps reflecting attentional allocation to items that resemble few words in the mental lexicon. The results constitute the first evidence that ERP effects of neighborhood density are affected by adult aging. The age difference may reflect either a unitary density effect that is delayed by approximately 150ms in older adults, or multiple processes that are differentially affected by aging. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neural Localization of Semantic Context Effects in Electromagnetic and Hemodynamic Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Petten, Cyma; Luka, Barbara J.

2006-01-01

Measures of electrical brain activity (event-related potentials, ERPs) have been useful in understanding language processing for several decades. Extant data suggest that the amplitude of the N400 component of the ERP is a general index of the ease or difficulty of retrieving stored conceptual knowledge associated with a word, which is dependent…

An ERP study of recognition memory for concrete and abstract pictures in school-aged children

PubMed Central

Boucher, Olivier; Chouinard-Leclaire, Christine; Muckle, Gina; Westerlund, Alissa; Burden, Matthew J.; Jacobson, Sandra W.; Jacobson, Joseph L.

2016-01-01

Recognition memory for concrete, nameable pictures is typically faster and more accurate than for abstract pictures. A dual-coding account for these findings suggests that concrete pictures are processed into verbal and image codes, whereas abstract pictures are encoded in image codes only. Recognition memory relies on two successive and distinct processes, namely familiarity and recollection. Whether these two processes are similarly or differently affected by stimulus concreteness remains unknown. This study examined the effect of picture concreteness on visual recognition memory processes using event-related potentials (ERPs). In a sample of children involved in a longitudinal study, participants (N = 96; mean age = 11.3 years) were assessed on a continuous visual recognition memory task in which half the pictures were easily nameable, everyday concrete objects, and the other half were three-dimensional abstract, sculpture-like objects. Behavioral performance and ERP correlates of familiarity and recollection (respectively, the FN400 and P600 repetition effects) were measured. Behavioral results indicated faster and more accurate identification of concrete pictures as “new” or “old” (i.e., previously displayed) compared to abstract pictures. ERPs were characterised by a larger repetition effect, on the P600 amplitude, for concrete than for abstract images, suggesting a graded recollection process dependant on the type of material to be recollected. Topographic differences were observed within the FN400 latency interval, especially over anterior-inferior electrodes, with the repetition effect more pronounced and localized over the left hemisphere for concrete stimuli, potentially reflecting different neural processes underlying early processing of verbal/semantic and visual material in memory. PMID:27329352

Semantic processing during morphological priming: an ERP study.

PubMed

Beyersmann, Elisabeth; Iakimova, Galina; Ziegler, Johannes C; Colé, Pascale

2014-09-04

Previous research has yielded conflicting results regarding the onset of semantic processing during morphological priming. The present study was designed to further explore the time-course of morphological processing using event-related potentials (ERPs). We conducted a primed lexical decision study comparing a morphological (LAVAGE - laver [washing - wash]), a semantic (LINGE - laver [laundry - wash]), an orthographic (LAVANDE - laver [lavender - wash]), and an unrelated control condition (HOSPICE - laver [nursing home - wash]), using the same targets across the four priming conditions. The behavioral data showed significant effects of morphological and semantic priming, with the magnitude of morphological priming being significantly larger than the magnitude of semantic priming. The ERP data revealed significant morphological but no semantic priming at 100-250 ms. Furthermore, a reduction of the N400 amplitude in the morphological condition compared to the semantic and orthographic condition demonstrates that the morphological priming effect was not entirely due to the semantic or orthographic overlap between the prime and the target. The present data reflect an early process of semantically blind morphological decomposition, and a later process of morpho-semantic decomposition, which we discuss in the context of recent morphological processing theories. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Combination of PCA and LORETA for sources analysis of ERP data: an emotional processing study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hu, Jin; Tian, Jie; Yang, Lei; Pan, Xiaohong; Liu, Jiangang

2006-03-01

The purpose of this paper is to study spatiotemporal patterns of neuronal activity in emotional processing by analysis of ERP data. 108 pictures (categorized as positive, negative and neutral) were presented to 24 healthy, right-handed subjects while 128-channel EEG data were recorded. An analysis of two steps was applied to the ERP data. First, principal component analysis was performed to obtain significant ERP components. Then LORETA was applied to each component to localize their brain sources. The first six principal components were extracted, each of which showed different spatiotemporal patterns of neuronal activity. The results agree with other emotional study by fMRI or PET. The combination of PCA and LORETA can be used to analyze spatiotemporal patterns of ERP data in emotional processing.

Neural Basis of the Emotional Conflict Processing in Major Depression: ERPs and Source Localization Analysis on the N450 and P300 Components

PubMed Central

Zhu, Jing; Li, Jianxiu; Li, Xiaowei; Rao, Juan; Hao, Yanrong; Ding, Zhijie; Wang, Gangping

2018-01-01

Objects: Effective psychological function requires that cognition is not affected by task-irrelevant emotional stimuli in emotional conflict. Depression is mainly characterized as an emotional disorder. The object of this study is to reveal the behavioral and electrophysiological signature of emotional conflict processing in major depressive disorder (MDD) using event-related potentials (ERPs) and standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) analysis. Method: We used a face–word Stroop task involving emotional faces while recording EEG (electroencephalography) in 20 patients with MDD and 20 healthy controls (HCs). And then ERPs were extracted and the corresponding brain sources were reconstructed using sLORETA. Results: Behaviorally, subjects with MDDs manifested significantly increased Stroop effect when examining the RT difference between happy incongruent trials and happy congruent trials, compared with HC subjects. ERP results exhibited that MDDs were characterized by the attenuated difference between P300 amplitude to sad congruent stimuli and sad incongruent stimuli, as electrophysiological evidence of impaired conflict processing in subjects with MDD. The sLORETA results showed that MDD patients had a higher current density in rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rostral ACC) within N450 time window in response to happy incongruent trials than happy congruent stimuli. Moreover, HC subjects had stronger activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) region in response to incongruent stimuli than congruent stimuli, revealing successful inhibition of emotional distraction in HCs, which was absent in MDDs. Conclusion: Our results indicated that rostral ACC was implicated in the processing of negative emotional distraction in MDDs, as well as impaired inhibition of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli, relative to HCs. This work furnishes novel behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that are closely related to emotional conflict among

Investigation of Effects of Face Rotation on Race Processing: An ERPs Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Montalan, Benoit; Veujoz, Mathieu; Boitout, Alexis; Leleu, Arnaud; Camus, Odile; Lalonde, Robert; Rebai, Mohamed

2013-01-01

Recent ERP research has indicated that the processing of faces of other races (OR) and same race (SR) as the perceiver differs at the perceptual level, more precisely for the N170 component. The purpose of the present study was to continue the investigation of the race-of-face processing across multiple orientations. Event-related brain potentials…

Cognitive inhibition of number/length interference in a Piaget-like task: evidence by combining ERP and MEG.

PubMed

Joliot, Marc; Leroux, Gaëlle; Dubal, Stéphanie; Tzourio-Mazoyer, Nathalie; Houdé, Olivier; Mazoyer, Bernard; Petit, Laurent

2009-08-01

We combined event-related potential (ERP) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) acquisition and analysis to investigate the electrophysiological markers of the inhibitory processes involved in the number/length interference in a Piaget-like numerical task. Eleven healthy subjects performed four gradually interfering conditions with the heuristic "length equals number" to be inhibited. Low resolution tomography reconstruction was performed on the combined grand averaged electromagnetic data at the early (N1, P1) and late (P2, N2, P3(early) and P3(late)) latencies. Every condition was analyzed at both scalp and regional brain levels. The inhibitory processes were visible on the late components of the electromagnetic brain activity. A right P2-related frontal orbital activation reflected the change of strategy in the inhibitory processes. N2-related SMA/cingulate activation revealed the first occurrence of the stimuli processing to be inhibited. Both P3 components revealed the working memory processes operating in a medial temporal complex and the mental imagery processes subtended by the precuneus. Simultaneous ERP and MEG signal acquisition and analysis allowed to describe the spatiotemporal patterns of neural networks involved in the inhibition of the "length equals number" interference. Combining ERP and MEG ensured a sensitivity which could be reached previously only through invasive intracortical recordings.

The Neural Correlates of Infant and Adult Goal Prediction: Evidence for Semantic Processing Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reid, Vincent M.; Hoehl, Stefanie; Grigutsch, Maren; Groendahl, Anna; Parise, Eugenio; Striano, Tricia

2009-01-01

The sequential nature of action ensures that an individual can anticipate the conclusion of an observed action via the use of semantic rules. The semantic processing of language and action has been linked to the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP). The authors developed an ERP paradigm in which infants and adults observed simple…

Neural correlates of multimodal metaphor comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials and time-frequency decompositions.

PubMed

Ma, Qingguo; Hu, Linfeng; Xiao, Can; Bian, Jun; Jin, Jia; Wang, Qiuzhen

2016-11-01

The present study examined the event-related potential (ERP) and time-frequency components correlates with the comprehension process of multimodal metaphors that were represented by the combination of "a vehicle picture+a written word of an animal". Electroencephalogram data were recorded when participants decided whether the metaphor using an animal word for the vehicle rendered by a picture was appropriate or not. There were two conditions: appropriateness (e.g., sport utility vehicles+tiger) vs. inappropriateness (e.g., sport utility vehicles+cat). The ERP results showed that inappropriate metaphor elicited larger N300 (280-360ms) and N400 (380-460ms) amplitude than appropriate one, which were different from previous exclusively verbal metaphor studies that rarely observed the N300 effect. A P600 (550-750ms) was also observed and larger in appropriate metaphor condition. Besides, the time-frequency principal component analysis revealed that two independent theta activities indexed the separable processes (retrieval of semantic features and semantic integration) underlying the N300 and N400. Delta band was also induced within a later time window and best characterized the integration process underlying P600. These results indicate the specific cognitive mechanism of multimodal metaphor comprehension that is different from verbal metaphor processing, mirrored by several separable processes indexed by ERP components and time-frequency components. The present study extends the metaphor research by uncovering the functional roles of delta and theta as well as their unique contributions to the ERP components during multimodal metaphor comprehension. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Working memory load modulates the neural response to other's pain: Evidence from an ERP study.

PubMed

Cui, Fang; Zhu, Xiangru; Luo, Yuejia; Cheng, Jiaping

2017-03-22

The present study investigated the time course of processing other's pain under different conditions of working memory (WM) load. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while the participants held two digits (low WM load) or six digits (high WM load) in WM and viewed pictures that showed others who were in painful or non-painful situations. Robust WM-load×Picture interactions were found for the N2 and LPP components. In the high WM-load condition, painful pictures elicited significantly larger amplitudes than non-painful pictures. In the low WM load condition, the difference between the painful and non-painful pictures was not significant. These ERP results indicate that WM load can influence both the early automatic N2 component and late cognitive LPP component. Compared with high WM load, low WM load reduced affective arousal and emotional sharing in response to other's pain and weakened the cognitive evaluation of task irrelevant stimuli. These findings are explained from the load theory perspective. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ERP correlates of unexpected word forms in a picture–word study of infants and adults

PubMed Central

Duta, M.D.; Styles, S.J.; Plunkett, K.

2012-01-01

We tested 14-month-olds and adults in an event-related potentials (ERPs) study in which pictures of familiar objects generated expectations about upcoming word forms. Expected word forms labelled the picture (word condition), while unexpected word forms mismatched by either a small deviation in word medial vowel height (mispronunciation condition) or a large deviation from the onset of the first speech segment (pseudoword condition). Both infants and adults showed sensitivity to both types of unexpected word form. Adults showed a chain of discrete effects: positivity over the N1 wave, negativity over the P2 wave (PMN effect) and negativity over the N2 wave (N400 effect). Infants showed a similar pattern, including a robust effect similar to the adult P2 effect. These observations were underpinned by a novel visualisation method which shows the dynamics of the ERP within bands of the scalp over time. The results demonstrate shared processing mechanisms across development, as even subtle deviations from expected word forms were indexed in both age groups by a reduction in the amplitude of characteristic waves in the early auditory evoked potential. PMID:22483072

The influence of behavioral relevance on the processing of global scene properties: An ERP study.

PubMed

Hansen, Natalie E; Noesen, Birken T; Nador, Jeffrey D; Harel, Assaf

2018-05-02

Recent work studying the temporal dynamics of visual scene processing (Harel et al., 2016) has found that global scene properties (GSPs) modulate the amplitude of early Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). It is still not clear, however, to what extent the processing of these GSPs is influenced by their behavioral relevance, determined by the goals of the observer. To address this question, we investigated how behavioral relevance, operationalized by the task context impacts the electrophysiological responses to GSPs. In a set of two experiments we recorded ERPs while participants viewed images of real-world scenes, varying along two GSPs, naturalness (manmade/natural) and spatial expanse (open/closed). In Experiment 1, very little attention to scene content was required as participants viewed the scenes while performing an orthogonal fixation-cross task. In Experiment 2 participants saw the same scenes but now had to actively categorize them, based either on their naturalness or spatial expense. We found that task context had very little impact on the early ERP responses to the naturalness and spatial expanse of the scenes: P1, N1, and P2 could distinguish between open and closed scenes and between manmade and natural scenes across both experiments. Further, the specific effects of naturalness and spatial expanse on the ERP components were largely unaffected by their relevance for the task. A task effect was found at the N1 and P2 level, but this effect was manifest across all scene dimensions, indicating a general effect rather than an interaction between task context and GSPs. Together, these findings suggest that the extraction of global scene information reflected in the early ERP components is rapid and very little influenced by top-down observer-based goals. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The oxidoreductase ERp57 efficiently reduces partially folded in preference to fully folded MHC class I molecules

PubMed Central

Antoniou, Antony N.; Ford, Stuart; Alphey, Magnus; Osborne, Andrew; Elliott, Tim; Powis, Simon J.

2002-01-01

The oxidoreductase ERp57 is an integral component of the peptide loading complex of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules, formed during their chaperone-assisted assembly in the endoplasmic reticulum. Misfolded MHC class I molecules or those denied suitable peptides are retrotranslocated and degraded in the cytosol. The presence of ERp57 during class I assembly suggests it may be involved in the reduction of intrachain disulfides prior to retrotranslocation. We have studied the ability of ERp57 to reduce MHC class I molecules in vitro. Recombinant ERp57 specifically reduced partially folded MHC class I molecules, whereas it had little or no effect on folded and peptide-loaded MHC class I molecules. Reductase activity was associated with cysteines at positions 56 and 405 of ERp57, the N-terminal residues of the active CXXC motifs. Our data suggest that the reductase activity of ERp57 may be involved during the unfolding of MHC class I molecules, leading to targeting for degradation. PMID:12032078

Unusual solvatochromic absorbance probe behaviour within mixtures of poly(ethylene glycol)-400 + ionic liquid, [bmim][Tf2N

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ali, Anwar; Ali, Maroof; Malik, Nisar Ahmad; Uzair, Sahar

2014-03-01

The potentially green solvents made up of ionic liquids (ILs) and poly(ethylene glycols) may have wide range of the applications in many chemical and biochemical fields. In the present work, solvatochromic absorbance probe behaviour is used to assess the physicochemical properties of the mixtures composed of PEG-400 + IL, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, [bmim][Tf2N]. Lowest energy intramolecular charge-transfer absorbance maxima of a betaine dye, i.e., ETN , indicates the dipolarity/polarizability and/or hydrogen-bond donating (HBD) acidity of the [bmim][Tf2N] + PEG-400 mixtures to be even higher than that of neat [bmim][Tf2N], the solution component with higher dipolarity/polarizability and/or HBD acidity. Dipolarity/polarizability (π∗) obtained separately from the electronic absorbance response of probe N,N-diethyl-4-nitroaniline, and the HBD acidity (α) of PEG-400 + [bmim][Tf2N] mixtures are also observed to be anomalously high. A comparative study of the PEG + IL mixtures has also been done with PEG-400 + molecular organic solvents (protic polar [methanol], aprotic polar [N,N-dimethylformamide], and non polar, [benzene]) mixtures, but these mixtures do not show this type of unusual behaviour. A four-parameter simplified combined nearly ideal binary solvent/Redlich-Kister (CNIBS/R-K) equation is shown to satisfactorily predict the solvatochromic parameters within PEG-400 + different solvent mixtures.

Electrophysiological Responses to Expectancy Violations in Semantic and Gambling Tasks: A Comparison of Different EEG Reference Approaches

PubMed Central

Li, Ya; Wang, Yongchun; Zhang, Baoqiang; Wang, Yonghui; Zhou, Xiaolin

2018-01-01

Dynamically evaluating the outcomes of our actions and thoughts is a fundamental cognitive ability. Given its excellent temporal resolution, the event-related potential (ERP) technology has been used to address this issue. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) component of ERPs has been studied intensively with the averaged linked mastoid reference method (LM). However, it is unknown whether FRN can be induced by an expectancy violation in an antonym relations context and whether LM is the most suitable reference approach. To address these issues, the current research directly compared the ERP components induced by expectancy violations in antonym expectation and gambling tasks with a within-subjects design and investigated the effect of the reference approach on the experimental effects. Specifically, we systematically compared the influence of the LM, reference electrode standardization technique (REST) and average reference (AVE) approaches on the amplitude, scalp distribution and magnitude of ERP effects as a function of expectancy violation type. The expectancy deviation in the antonym expectation task elicited an N400 effect that differed from the FRN effect induced in the gambling task; this difference was confirmed by all the three reference methods. Both the amplitudes of the ERP effects (N400 and FRN) and the magnitude as the expectancy violation increased were greater under the LM approach than those under the REST approach, followed by those under the AVE approach. Based on the statistical results, the electrode sites that showed the N400 and FRN effects critically depended on the reference method, and the results of the REST analysis were consistent with previous ERP studies. Combined with evidence from simulation studies, we suggest that REST is an optional reference method to be used in future ERP data analysis. PMID:29615858

Differences in behavioural phenotype between parental deletion and maternal uniparental disomy in Prader-Willi syndrome: an ERP study.

PubMed

Stauder, Johannes E A; Boer, Harm; Gerits, Rolf H A; Tummers, Anke; Whittington, Joyce; Curfs, Leopold M G

2005-06-01

Paternal deletion and maternal uniparental disomy are the principal genetic subtypes associated with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS). Recent clinical findings suggest differences in phenotype between these subtypes. The present experimental study addresses this issue using a cognitive psycho-physiological setup. Behaviour and event-related brain activity (ERP) was recorded by a continuous performance response inhibition task (CPT-AX) in adults with paternal deletion PWS (n=11), maternal uniparental disomy PWS (n=11) and normal controls (n=11). The dependent behavioural variables of the CPT-AX task were reaction time and correct scores. For the ERPs the N200 and P300 components were included which are related to early modality-specific inhibition and late general inhibition, respectively. The disomy group had fewer correct scores and increased reaction times as compared to the CPT-AX task than the control and deletion group. Both PWS subgroups differed significantly from the control group for the N200 amplitude. Only the control group showed the typical task modulation for the N200 amplitude. The amplitude of the P300 component was considerably smaller in the uniparental disomy group than in the deletion and control groups. The ERP results suggest that early modality specific inhibition is impaired in both PWS genetic subtypes. Late general inhibition is impaired in the uniparental disomy group only. Thus, although the ERP data suggests a common impairment in early visual inhibition processing, uniparental disomy and parental deletion genetic PWS subtypes clearly differ in their behavioural and brain activation phenotypes. The present study is the first experimental demonstration which explains the two principal genetic mechanisms that hinder the expression of the genes at 15q11-q13g in PWS result in different behavioural phenotype.

Knowledge Management ERP Curriculum Design/Mapping (Theory and Development Tools)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swanson, Zane; Hepner, Michelle

2011-01-01

This study proposes a knowledge management framework for developing and managing enterprise resource planning (ERP) curriculum within business schools. Both theory and a practical implementation are addressed. The knowledge management (KM) framework has two components which utilize ERP from a big picture curriculum overview and a ground level…

Knowledge inhibition and N400: a study with words that look like common words.

PubMed

Debruille, J B

1998-04-01

In addition to their own representations, low frequency words, such as BRIBE, can covertly activate the representations of higher frequency words they look like (e.g., BRIDE). Hence, look-alike words can activate knowledge that is incompatible with the knowledge corresponding to accurate representations. Comparatively, eccentric words, that is, low frequency words that do not look as much like higher frequency words, are less likely to activate incompatible knowledge. This study focuses on the hypothesis that the N400 component of the event-related potential reflects the inhibition of incompatible knowledge. This hypothesis predicts that look-alike words elicit N400s of greater amplitudes than eccentric words in conditions where incompatible knowledge is inhibited. Results from a single item lexical decision experiment are reported which support the inhibition hypothesis. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.

An ERP study on decisions between attractive females and money.

PubMed

Zeng, Jianmin; Wang, Yujiao; Zhang, Qinglin

2012-01-01

To investigate the neural processes of decision-makings between attractive females and money, we recorded 18 male participants' brain event-related potentials (ERPs) when they performed a novel task of deciding between viewing an attractive female's fuzzy picture in clear and gaining a certain amount of money. Two types of attractive females were included: sexy females and beautiful females. Several new electrophysiological discoveries were obtained as following. First, the beautiful females vs. money task (task B) elicited a larger positive ERP deflection (P2) than the sexy females vs. money task (task S) between 290 and 340 ms, and this probably related to the perception matching process between a visual input and an internal representation or expectation. Second, task S evoked greater negative ERP waves (N2) than task B during the time window of 340-390 ms, and this might relate to response conflict and cognitive monitoring for impulsive tendency. Third, the ERP positivity in task S was larger than task B in the time interval of 550-1000 ms, reflecting that sexy female images may have higher decision value for males than beautiful female images. Fourth, compared with choosing to gain money, choosing to view an attractive female evoked a larger late positive component (LPC) during the same time window, possibly because attractive females are more direct and evolutionarily earlier rewards for males than money amounts.

ERP=Efficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Violino, Bob

2008-01-01

This article discusses the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Deploying an ERP system is one of the most extensive--and expensive--IT projects a college or university can undertake. The potential benefits of ERP are significant: a more smoothly running operation with efficiencies in virtually every area of administration, from automated…

An ERP study of recognition memory for concrete and abstract pictures in school-aged children.

PubMed

Boucher, Olivier; Chouinard-Leclaire, Christine; Muckle, Gina; Westerlund, Alissa; Burden, Matthew J; Jacobson, Sandra W; Jacobson, Joseph L

2016-08-01

Recognition memory for concrete, nameable pictures is typically faster and more accurate than for abstract pictures. A dual-coding account for these findings suggests that concrete pictures are processed into verbal and image codes, whereas abstract pictures are encoded in image codes only. Recognition memory relies on two successive and distinct processes, namely familiarity and recollection. Whether these two processes are similarly or differently affected by stimulus concreteness remains unknown. This study examined the effect of picture concreteness on visual recognition memory processes using event-related potentials (ERPs). In a sample of children involved in a longitudinal study, participants (N=96; mean age=11.3years) were assessed on a continuous visual recognition memory task in which half the pictures were easily nameable, everyday concrete objects, and the other half were three-dimensional abstract, sculpture-like objects. Behavioral performance and ERP correlates of familiarity and recollection (respectively, the FN400 and P600 repetition effects) were measured. Behavioral results indicated faster and more accurate identification of concrete pictures as "new" or "old" (i.e., previously displayed) compared to abstract pictures. ERPs were characterized by a larger repetition effect, on the P600 amplitude, for concrete than for abstract images, suggesting a graded recollection process dependent on the type of material to be recollected. Topographic differences were observed within the FN400 latency interval, especially over anterior-inferior electrodes, with the repetition effect more pronounced and localized over the left hemisphere for concrete stimuli, potentially reflecting different neural processes underlying early processing of verbal/semantic and visual material in memory. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The roles of protein disulphide isomerase family A, member 3 (ERp57) and surface thiol/disulphide exchange in human spermatozoa-zona pellucida binding.

PubMed

Wong, Chi-Wai; Lam, Kevin K W; Lee, Cheuk-Lun; Yeung, William S B; Zhao, Wei E; Ho, Pak-Chung; Ou, Jian-Ping; Chiu, Philip C N

2017-04-01

Are multimeric sperm plasma membrane protein complexes, ERp57 and sperm surface thiol content involved in human spermatozoa-zona pellucida (ZP) interaction? ERp57 is a component of a multimeric spermatozoa-ZP receptor complex involved in regulation of human spermatozoa-ZP binding via up-regulation of sperm surface thiol content. A spermatozoon acquires its fertilization capacity within the female reproductive tract by capacitation. Spermatozoa-ZP receptor is suggested to be a composite structure that is assembled into a functional complex during capacitation. Sperm surface thiol content is elevated during capacitation. ERp57 is a protein disulphide isomerase that modulates the thiol-disulphide status of proteins. The binding ability and components of protein complexes in extracted membrane protein fractions of spermatozoa were studied. The roles of capacitation, thiol-disulphide reagent treatments and ERp57 on sperm functions and sperm surface thiol content were assessed. Spermatozoa were obtained from semen samples from normozoospermic men. Human oocytes were obtained from an assisted reproduction programme. Blue native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, western ligand blotting and mass spectrometry were used to identify the components of solubilized ZP/ZP3-binding complexes. The localization and expression of sperm surface thiol and ERp57 were studied by immunostaining and sperm surface protein biotinylation followed by western blotting. Sperm functions were assessed by standard assays. Several ZP-binding complexes were isolated from the cell membrane of capacitated spermatozoa. ERp57 was a component of one of these complexes. Capacitation significantly increased the sperm surface thiol content, acrosomal thiol distribution and ERp57 expression on sperm surface. Sperm surface thiol and ERp57 immunoreactivity were localized to the acrosomal region of spermatozoa, a region responsible for ZP-binding. Up-regulation of the surface thiol content or ERp57 surface

Processing of visual food cues during bitter taste perception in female patients with binge-eating symptoms: A cross-modal ERP study.

PubMed

Schienle, Anne; Scharmüller, Wilfried; Schwab, Daniela

2017-11-01

In healthy individuals, the perception of an intense bitter taste decreased the reward value of visual food cues, as reflected by the reduction of a specific event-related brain potential (ERP), frontal late positivity. The current cross-modal ERP study investigated responses of female patients with binge-eating symptoms (BES) to this type of visual-gustatory stimulation. Women with BES (n=36) and female control participants (n=38) viewed food images after they rinsed their mouth with either bitter wormwood tea or water. Relative to controls, the patients showed elevated late positivity (LPP: 400-700ms) to the food images in the bitter condition. The LPP source was located in the medial prefrontal cortex. Both groups did not differ in the ratings for the fluids (intensity, bitterness, disgust). This ERP study showed that a bitter taste did not decrease late positivity to visual food cues (reflecting food reward) in women with BES. The atypical bitter responding might be a biological marker of this condition and possibly contributes to overeating. Future studies should additionally record food intake behavior to further investigate this mechanism. Copyright © 2017 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Deficits of unconscious emotional processing in patients with major depression: An ERP study.

PubMed

Zhang, Dandan; He, Zhenhong; Chen, Yuming; Wei, Zhaoguo

2016-07-15

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with behavioral and neurobiological evidences of negative bias in unconscious emotional processing. However, little is known about the time course of this deficit. The current study aimed to explore the unconscious processing of emotional facial expressions in MDD patients by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). The ERP responses to subliminally presented happy/neutral/sad faces were recorded in 26 medication-free patients and 26 healthy controls in a backward masking task. Three ERP components were compared between patients and controls. Detection accuracy was at chance level for both groups, suggesting that the process was performed in the absence of conscious awareness of the emotional stimuli. Robust emotion×group interactions were observed in P1, N170 and P3. Compared with the neutral faces, 1) the patients showed larger P1 for sad and smaller P1 for happy faces; however, the controls showed a completely inverse P1 pattern; 2) the controls exhibited larger N170 in the happy but not in the sad trials, whereas patients had comparable larger N170 amplitudes in sad and happy trials; 3) although both groups exhibited larger P3 for emotional faces, the patients showed a priority for sad trials while the controls showed a priority for happy trials. Our data suggested that negative processing bias exists on the unconscious level in individuals with MDD. The ERP measures indicated that the unconscious emotional processing in MDD patients has a time course of three-stage deflection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Following the time course of face gender and expression processing: a task-dependent ERP study.

PubMed

Valdés-Conroy, Berenice; Aguado, Luis; Fernández-Cahill, María; Romero-Ferreiro, Verónica; Diéguez-Risco, Teresa

2014-05-01

The effects of task demands and the interaction between gender and expression in face perception were studied using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants performed three different tasks with male and female faces that were emotionally inexpressive or that showed happy or angry expressions. In two of the tasks (gender and expression categorization) facial properties were task-relevant while in a third task (symbol discrimination) facial information was irrelevant. Effects of expression were observed on the visual P100 component under all task conditions, suggesting the operation of an automatic process that is not influenced by task demands. The earliest interaction between expression and gender was observed later in the face-sensitive N170 component. This component showed differential modulations by specific combinations of gender and expression (e.g., angry male vs. angry female faces). Main effects of expression and task were observed in a later occipito-temporal component peaking around 230 ms post-stimulus onset (EPN or early posterior negativity). Less positive amplitudes in the presence of angry faces and during performance of the gender and expression tasks were observed. Finally, task demands also modulated a positive component peaking around 400 ms (LPC, or late positive complex) that showed enhanced amplitude for the gender task. The pattern of results obtained here adds new evidence about the sequence of operations involved in face processing and the interaction of facial properties (gender and expression) in response to different task demands. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ERP correlates of German Sign Language processing in deaf native signers.

PubMed

Hänel-Faulhaber, Barbara; Skotara, Nils; Kügow, Monique; Salden, Uta; Bottari, Davide; Röder, Brigitte

2014-05-10

The present study investigated the neural correlates of sign language processing of Deaf people who had learned German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) from their Deaf parents as their first language. Correct and incorrect signed sentences were presented sign by sign on a computer screen. At the end of each sentence the participants had to judge whether or not the sentence was an appropriate DGS sentence. Two types of violations were introduced: (1) semantically incorrect sentences containing a selectional restriction violation (implausible object); (2) morphosyntactically incorrect sentences containing a verb that was incorrectly inflected (i.e., incorrect direction of movement). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 74 scalp electrodes. Semantic violations (implausible signs) elicited an N400 effect followed by a positivity. Sentences with a morphosyntactic violation (verb agreement violation) elicited a negativity followed by a broad centro-parietal positivity. ERP correlates of semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of DGS clearly differed from each other and showed a number of similarities with those observed in other signed and oral languages. These data suggest a similar functional organization of signed and oral languages despite the visual-spacial modality of sign language.

ERP correlates of German Sign Language processing in deaf native signers

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background The present study investigated the neural correlates of sign language processing of Deaf people who had learned German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) from their Deaf parents as their first language. Correct and incorrect signed sentences were presented sign by sign on a computer screen. At the end of each sentence the participants had to judge whether or not the sentence was an appropriate DGS sentence. Two types of violations were introduced: (1) semantically incorrect sentences containing a selectional restriction violation (implausible object); (2) morphosyntactically incorrect sentences containing a verb that was incorrectly inflected (i.e., incorrect direction of movement). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 74 scalp electrodes. Results Semantic violations (implausible signs) elicited an N400 effect followed by a positivity. Sentences with a morphosyntactic violation (verb agreement violation) elicited a negativity followed by a broad centro-parietal positivity. Conclusions ERP correlates of semantic and morphosyntactic aspects of DGS clearly differed from each other and showed a number of similarities with those observed in other signed and oral languages. These data suggest a similar functional organization of signed and oral languages despite the visual-spacial modality of sign language. PMID:24884527

The time course of reading processes in children with and without dyslexia: an ERP study

PubMed Central

Hasko, Sandra; Groth, Katarina; Bruder, Jennifer; Bartling, Jürgen; Schulte-Körne, Gerd

2013-01-01

The main diagnostic criterion for developmental dyslexia (DD) in transparent orthographies is a remarkable reading speed deficit, which is often accompanied by spelling difficulties. These deficits have been traced back to both deficits in orthographic and phonological processing. For a better understanding of the reading speed deficit in DD it is necessary to clarify which processing steps are degraded in children with DD during reading. In order to address this question the present study used EEG to investigate three reading related ERPs: the N170, N400 and LPC. Twenty-nine children without DD and 52 children with DD performed a phonological lexical decision (PLD)—task, which tapped both orthographic and phonological processing. Children were presented with words, pseudohomophones, pseudowords and false fonts and had to decide whether the presented stimulus sounded like an existing German word or not. Compared to control children, children with DD showed deficits in all the investigated ERPs. Firstly, a diminished mean area under the curve for the word material-false font contrasts in the time window of the N170 was observed, indicating a reduced degree of print sensitivity; secondly, N400 amplitudes, as suggested to reflect the access to the orthographic lexicon and grapheme-phoneme conversion, were attenuated; and lastly, phonological access as indexed by the LPC was degraded in children with DD. Processing differences dependent on the linguistic material in children without DD were observed only in the LPC, suggesting that similar reading processes were adopted independent of orthographic familiarity. The results of this study suggest that effective treatment should include both orthographic and phonological training. Furthermore, more longitudinal studies utilizing the same task and stimuli are needed to clarify how these processing steps and their time course change during reading development. PMID:24109444

Is Semantic Processing During Sentence Reading Autonomous or Controlled? Evidence from the N400 Component in a Dual Task Paradigm

PubMed Central

Hohlfeld, Annette; Martín-Loeches, Manuel; Sommer, Werner

2015-01-01

The present study contributes to the discussion on the automaticity of semantic processing. Whereas most previous research investigated semantic processing at word level, the present study addressed semantic processing during sentence reading. A dual task paradigm was combined with the recording of event-related brain potentials. Previous research at word level processing reported different patterns of interference with the N400 by additional tasks: attenuation of amplitude or delay of latency. In the present study, we presented Spanish sentences that were semantically correct or contained a semantic violation in a critical word. At different intervals preceding the critical word a tone was presented that required a high-priority choice response. At short intervals/high temporal overlap between the tasks mean amplitude of the N400 was reduced relative to long intervals/low temporal overlap, but there were no shifts of peak latency. We propose that processing at sentence level exerts a protective effect against the additional task. This is in accord with the attentional sensitization model (Kiefer & Martens, 2010), which suggests that semantic processing is an automatic process that can be enhanced by the currently activated task set. The present experimental sentences also induced a P600, which is taken as an index of integrative processing. Additional task effects are comparable to those in the N400 time window and are briefly discussed. PMID:26203312

The subliminal affective priming effects of faces displaying various levels of arousal: an ERP study.

PubMed

Li, Tian-Tian; Lu, Yong

2014-11-07

This study on the subliminal affective priming effects of faces displaying various levels of arousal employed event-related potentials (ERPs). The participants were asked to rate the arousal of ambiguous medium-arousing faces that were preceded by high- or low-arousing priming faces presented subliminally. The results revealed that the participants exhibited arousal-consistent variation in their arousal level ratings of the probe faces exclusively in the negative prime condition. Compared with high-arousing faces, the low-arousing faces tended to elicit greater late positive component (LPC, 450-660ms) and greater N400 (330-450ms) potentials. These findings support the following conclusions: (1) the effect of subliminal affective priming of faces can be detected in the affective arousal dimension; (2) valence may influence the subliminal affective priming effect of the arousal dimension of emotional stimuli; and (3) the subliminal affective priming effect of face arousal occurs when the prime stimulus affects late-stage processing of the probe. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners’ English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis

PubMed Central

Xue, Jin; Liu, Tongtong; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando; Pei, Xuna

2017-01-01

The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learning (i.e., primary school, junior and senior high schools). A 3 (AoA: early vs. intermediate vs. late) × 2 (regularity: regular vs. irregular) × 2 (semantic relatedness: related vs. unrelated) × 2 (hemisphere: left vs. right) × 3 (brain area: anterior vs. central vs. posterior) within-subjects design was adopted. Results from the analysis of N100 and N400 amplitudes showed that early learned words had an advantage in processing accuracy and speed; there is a tendency that the AoA effect was more pronounced for irregular word pairs and in the semantic related condition. More important, ERP results showed early acquired words induced larger N100 amplitudes for early AoA words in the parietal area and more negative-going N400 than late acquire words in the frontal and central regions. The results indicate the locus of the AoA effect might derive from the arbitrary mapping between word forms and semantic concepts, and early acquired words have more semantic interconnections than late acquired words. PMID:28572785

An ERP Study on Decisions between Attractive Females and Money

PubMed Central

Zhang, Qinglin

2012-01-01

To investigate the neural processes of decision-makings between attractive females and money, we recorded 18 male participants' brain event-related potentials (ERPs) when they performed a novel task of deciding between viewing an attractive female's fuzzy picture in clear and gaining a certain amount of money. Two types of attractive females were included: sexy females and beautiful females. Several new electrophysiological discoveries were obtained as following. First, the beautiful females vs. money task (task B) elicited a larger positive ERP deflection (P2) than the sexy females vs. money task (task S) between 290 and 340 ms, and this probably related to the perception matching process between a visual input and an internal representation or expectation. Second, task S evoked greater negative ERP waves (N2) than task B during the time window of 340–390 ms, and this might relate to response conflict and cognitive monitoring for impulsive tendency. Third, the ERP positivity in task S was larger than task B in the time interval of 550–1000 ms, reflecting that sexy female images may have higher decision value for males than beautiful female images. Fourth, compared with choosing to gain money, choosing to view an attractive female evoked a larger late positive component (LPC) during the same time window, possibly because attractive females are more direct and evolutionarily earlier rewards for males than money amounts. PMID:23077499

Self-Referential Processing in Depressed Adolescents: A High-Density ERP Study

PubMed Central

Auerbach, Randy P.; Stanton, Colin H.; Proudfit, Greg Hajcak; Pizzagalli, Diego A.

2015-01-01

Despite the alarming increase in the prevalence of depression during adolescence, particularly among female adolescents, the pathophysiology of depression in adolescents remains largely unknown. Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide an ideal approach to investigate cognitive-affective processes associated with depression in adolescents, especially in the context of negative self-referential processing biases. In this study, healthy (n = 30) and depressed (n = 22) female adolescents completed a self-referential encoding task while ERP data were recorded. To examine cognitive-affective processes associated with self-referential processing, P1, P2, and late positive potential (LPP) responses to negative and positive words were investigated, and intracortical sources of scalp effects were probed using Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA). Additionally, we tested whether key cognitive processes (e.g., maladaptive self-view, self-criticism) previously implicated in depression related to ERP components. Relative to healthy female subjects, depressed females endorsed more negative and fewer positive words, and free recalled and recognized fewer positive words. With respect to ERPs, compared to healthy female adolescents, depressed adolescents exhibited greater P1 amplitudes following negative words, which was associated with a more maladaptive self-view and self-criticism. In both early and late LPP responses, depressed females showed greater activity following negative versus positive words, whereas healthy females demonstrated the opposite pattern. For both P1 and LPP, LORETA revealed reduced inferior frontal gyrus activity in response to negative words in depressed versus healthy female adolescents. Collectively, these findings suggest that the P1 and LPP reflect biased self-referential processing in female adolescents with depression. Potential treatment implications are discussed. PMID:25643205

On understanding idiomatic language: The salience hypothesis assessed by ERPs.

PubMed

Laurent, Jean-Paul; Denhières, Guy; Passerieux, Christine; Iakimova, Galina; Hardy-Baylé, Marie-Christine

2006-01-12

Giora's [Giora, R., 1997. Understanding figurative and literal language: the Graded Salience Hypothesis. Cogn. Linguist. 7 (1), 183-206; Giora, R., 2003. On Our Mind: Salience Context and Figurative Language. Oxford Univ. Press, New York] Graded Salience Hypothesis states that more salient meanings-coded meanings foremost on our mind due to conventionality, frequency, familiarity, or prototypicality-are accessed faster than and reach sufficient levels of activation before less salient ones. This research addresses predictions derived from this model by examining the salience of familiar and predictable idioms, presented out of context. ERPs recorded from 30 subjects involved in reading and lexical decision tasks to (strongly/weakly) salient idioms and (figurative/literal) targets indicate that N400 amplitude was smaller for the last word of the strongly salient idioms than for the weakly salient idioms. Moreover, N400 amplitude of probes related to the salient meaning of strongly salient idioms was smaller than those of the 3 other conditions. In addition, response times to salient interpretations (the idiomatic meanings of highly salient idioms and the literal interpretations of less salient idioms) were shorter compared to the other conditions. These findings support Giora's Graded Salience Hypothesis. They show that salient meanings are accessed automatically, regardless of figurativity.

Development of lexical-semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18- and 24-month old children.

PubMed

Rämä, Pia; Sirri, Louah; Serres, Josette

2013-04-01

Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related (e.g., train-bike) or unrelated (e.g., chicken-bike). The results showed that the N400-like priming effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites. In 18-month-olds the effect was observed similarly to 24-month-olds only in those children with higher word production ability. The results suggest that words are categorically organized in the mental lexicon of children at the age of 2 years and even earlier in children with a high vocabulary. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The role of character-based knowledge in online narrative comprehension: evidence from eye movements and ERPs.

PubMed

Filik, Ruth; Leuthold, Hartmut

2013-04-19

Little is known about the on-line evaluation of information relating to well-known story characters during text comprehension. For example, it is not clear in how much detail readers represent character-based information, and the time course over which this information is utilized during on-line language comprehension. We describe an event-related potential (ERP) study (Experiment 1) and an eye-tracking study (Experiment 2) investigating whether, and when, readers utilize their prior knowledge of a character in processing event information. Participants read materials in which an event was described that either did or did not fit with the character's typical behavior. ERPs elicited by the critical word revealed an N400 effect when the action described did not fit with the character's typical behavior. Results from early eye movement measures supported these findings, and later measures suggested that such violations were more easily accommodated for well-known fictional characters than real-world characters. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Empirical Analysis of EEG and ERPs for Psychophysiological Adaptive Task Allocation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Prinzel, Lawrence J., III; Pope, Alan T.; Freeman, Frederick G.; Scerbo, Mark W.; Mikulka, Peter J.

2001-01-01

The present study was designed to test the efficacy of using Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) for making task allocation decisions. Thirty-six participants were randomly assigned to an experimental, yoked, or control group condition. Under the experimental condition, a tracking task was switched between task modes based upon the participant's EEG. The results showed that the use of adaptive aiding improved performance and lowered subjective workload under negative feedback as predicted. Additionally, participants in the adaptive group had significantly lower RMSE and NASA-TLX ratings than participants in either the yoked or control group conditions. Furthermore, the amplitudes of the N1 and P3 ERP components were significantly larger under the experimental group condition than under either the yoked or control group conditions. These results are discussed in terms of the implications for adaptive automation design.

Teaching ERP Systems: A Multi-Perspective View on the ERP System Market

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winkelmann, Axel; Leyh, Christian

2010-01-01

In order to increase the diversity in IS education, we discuss an approach for teaching medium-sized ERP systems in university courses. Many of today's IS curricula are biased toward a few large ERP packages. Nevertheless, these ERP systems are only a part of the ERP market. Therefore, this paper describes a course outline for an additional course…

Effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception: evidence from ERPs

PubMed Central

Alsius, Agnès; Möttönen, Riikka; Sams, Mikko E.; Soto-Faraco, Salvador; Tiippana, Kaisa

2014-01-01

Seeing articulatory movements influences perception of auditory speech. This is often reflected in a shortened latency of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) generated in the auditory cortex. The present study addressed whether this early neural correlate of audiovisual interaction is modulated by attention. We recorded ERPs in 15 subjects while they were presented with auditory, visual, and audiovisual spoken syllables. Audiovisual stimuli consisted of incongruent auditory and visual components known to elicit a McGurk effect, i.e., a visually driven alteration in the auditory speech percept. In a Dual task condition, participants were asked to identify spoken syllables whilst monitoring a rapid visual stream of pictures for targets, i.e., they had to divide their attention. In a Single task condition, participants identified the syllables without any other tasks, i.e., they were asked to ignore the pictures and focus their attention fully on the spoken syllables. The McGurk effect was weaker in the Dual task than in the Single task condition, indicating an effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception. Early auditory ERP components, N1 and P2, peaked earlier to audiovisual stimuli than to auditory stimuli when attention was fully focused on syllables, indicating neurophysiological audiovisual interaction. This latency decrement was reduced when attention was loaded, suggesting that attention influences early neural processing of audiovisual speech. We conclude that reduced attention weakens the interaction between vision and audition in speech. PMID:25076922

Effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception: evidence from ERPs.

PubMed

Alsius, Agnès; Möttönen, Riikka; Sams, Mikko E; Soto-Faraco, Salvador; Tiippana, Kaisa

2014-01-01

Seeing articulatory movements influences perception of auditory speech. This is often reflected in a shortened latency of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) generated in the auditory cortex. The present study addressed whether this early neural correlate of audiovisual interaction is modulated by attention. We recorded ERPs in 15 subjects while they were presented with auditory, visual, and audiovisual spoken syllables. Audiovisual stimuli consisted of incongruent auditory and visual components known to elicit a McGurk effect, i.e., a visually driven alteration in the auditory speech percept. In a Dual task condition, participants were asked to identify spoken syllables whilst monitoring a rapid visual stream of pictures for targets, i.e., they had to divide their attention. In a Single task condition, participants identified the syllables without any other tasks, i.e., they were asked to ignore the pictures and focus their attention fully on the spoken syllables. The McGurk effect was weaker in the Dual task than in the Single task condition, indicating an effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception. Early auditory ERP components, N1 and P2, peaked earlier to audiovisual stimuli than to auditory stimuli when attention was fully focused on syllables, indicating neurophysiological audiovisual interaction. This latency decrement was reduced when attention was loaded, suggesting that attention influences early neural processing of audiovisual speech. We conclude that reduced attention weakens the interaction between vision and audition in speech.

Pleasant mood intensifies brain processing of cognitive control: ERP correlates.

PubMed

Yuan, Jiajin; Xu, Shuang; Yang, Jiemin; Liu, Qiang; Chen, Antao; Zhu, Liping; Chen, Jie; Li, Hong

2011-04-01

The present study investigated the impact of auditory-induced mood on brain processing of cognitive control using a Stroop color-word interference task. A total of 135 positive, negative, and neutral sounds (45 of each) were presented in separate blocks for a mood induction procedure, which was then followed by a Stroop color-word task in each trial. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for color-word congruent, incongruent and neutral (color-word irrelevant) words and subjects named the printed colors of the words by pressing the appropriate key (irrespective of word meaning). Response latency was delayed during incongruent vs. neutral trials, and this cost did not interact significantly with mood states. ERP data showed prolonged peak latencies in the P200 component and more negative deflections in the Late Positive Component (LPC, 450-550 ms) during incongruent vs. neutral conditions, regardless of mood states. Moreover, the negative deflections (N450) in the 450-550 ms interval of the incongruent- neutral difference waves, which index cognitive control effect in brain potentials, was more pronounced in the pleasant, but not in the unpleasant, mood state when compared with the neutral mood state. These data suggest that, pleasant mood intensifies brain processing of cognitive control, in a situation requiring effective inhibition of task-irrelevant distracting information. In addition, N450 component serves as an affective marker, embodying not only cognitive control effect in the brain but also its interaction with mood states. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Accessing world knowledge: evidence from N400 and reaction time priming.

PubMed

Chwilla, Dorothee J; Kolk, Herman H J

2005-12-01

How fast are we in accessing world knowledge? In two experiments, we tested for priming for word triplets that described a conceptual script (e.g., DIRECTOR-BRIBE-DISMISSAL) but were not associatively related and did not share a category relationship. Event-related brain potentials were used to track the time course at which script information becomes available. In Experiment 1, in which participants made lexical decisions, we found a facilitation for script-related relative to unrelated triplets, as indicated by (i) a decrease in both reaction time and errors, and (ii) an N400-like priming effect. In Experiment 2, we further explored the locus of script priming by increasing the contribution of meaning integration processes. The participants' task was to indicate whether the three words presented a plausible scenario. Again, an N400 script priming effect was obtained. Directing attention to script relations was effective in enhancing the N400 effect. The time course of the N400 effect was similar to that of the standard N400 effect to semantic relations. The present results show that script priming can be obtained in the visual modality, and that script information is immediately accessed and integrated with context. This supports the view that script information forms a central aspect of word meaning. The RT and N400 script priming effects reported in this article are problematic for most current semantic priming models, like spreading activation models, expectancy models, and task-specific semantic matching/integration models. They support a view in which there is no clear cutoff point between semantic knowledge and world knowledge.

Dissociation between arithmetic relatedness and distance effects is modulated by task properties: An ERP study comparing explicit vs. implicit arithmetic processing

PubMed Central

Avancini, Chiara; Galfano, Giovanni; Szűcs, Dénes

2014-01-01

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have detected several characteristic consecutive amplitude modulations in both implicit and explicit mental arithmetic tasks. Implicit tasks typically focused on the arithmetic relatedness effect (in which performance is affected by semantic associations between numbers) while explicit tasks focused on the distance effect (in which performance is affected by the numerical difference of to-be-compared numbers). Both task types elicit morphologically similar ERP waves which were explained in functionally similar terms. However, to date, the relationship between these tasks has not been investigated explicitly and systematically. In order to fill this gap, here we examined whether ERP effects and their underlying cognitive processes in implicit and explicit mental arithmetic tasks differ from each other. The same group of participants performed both an implicit number-matching task (in which arithmetic knowledge is task-irrelevant) and an explicit arithmetic-verification task (in which arithmetic knowledge is task-relevant). 129-channel ERP data differed substantially between tasks. In the number-matching task, the arithmetic relatedness effect appeared as a negativity over left-frontal electrodes whereas the distance effect was more prominent over right centro-parietal electrodes. In the verification task, all probe types elicited similar N2b waves over right fronto-central electrodes and typical centro-parietal N400 effects over central electrodes. The distance effect appeared as an early-rising, long-lasting left parietal negativity. We suggest that ERP effects in the implicit task reflect access to semantic memory networks and to magnitude discrimination, respectively. In contrast, effects of expectation violation are more prominent in explicit tasks and may mask more delicate cognitive processes. PMID:25450162

Time will tell: A longitudinal investigation of brain-behavior relationships during reading development

DOE PAGES

Stites, Mallory C.; Laszlo, Sarah

2017-02-23

ERPs are a powerful tool for the study of reading, as they are both temporally precise and functionally specific. These are essential characteristics for studying a process that unfolds rapidly and consists of multiple, interactive subprocesses. In work with adults, clear, specific models exist linking components of the ERP with individual subprocesses of reading including orthographic decoding, phonological processing, and semantic access (e.g., Grainger & Holcomb, 2009). The relationships between ERP components and reading subprocesses are less clear in development; here, we address two questions regarding these relationships. First, we ask whether there are ERP markers that predict future readingmore » behaviors across a longitudinal year. Second, we ask whether any relationships observed between ERP components and reading behavior across time map onto the better-established relationships between ERPs and reading subprocesses in adults. To address these questions, we acquired ERPs from children engaging in a silent reading task and then, a year later, collected behavioral assessments of their reading ability. Finally, we find that ERPs collected in Year 1 do predict reading behaviors a year later. Further, we find that these relationships do conform, at least to some extent, to relationships between ERP components and reading subprocesses observed in adults, with, for example, N250 amplitude in Year 1 predicting phonological awareness in Year 2, and N400 amplitude in Year 1 predicting vocabulary in Year 2.« less

Time will tell: A longitudinal investigation of brain-behavior relationships during reading development

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Stites, Mallory C.; Laszlo, Sarah

ERPs are a powerful tool for the study of reading, as they are both temporally precise and functionally specific. These are essential characteristics for studying a process that unfolds rapidly and consists of multiple, interactive subprocesses. In work with adults, clear, specific models exist linking components of the ERP with individual subprocesses of reading including orthographic decoding, phonological processing, and semantic access (e.g., Grainger & Holcomb, 2009). The relationships between ERP components and reading subprocesses are less clear in development; here, we address two questions regarding these relationships. First, we ask whether there are ERP markers that predict future readingmore » behaviors across a longitudinal year. Second, we ask whether any relationships observed between ERP components and reading behavior across time map onto the better-established relationships between ERPs and reading subprocesses in adults. To address these questions, we acquired ERPs from children engaging in a silent reading task and then, a year later, collected behavioral assessments of their reading ability. Finally, we find that ERPs collected in Year 1 do predict reading behaviors a year later. Further, we find that these relationships do conform, at least to some extent, to relationships between ERP components and reading subprocesses observed in adults, with, for example, N250 amplitude in Year 1 predicting phonological awareness in Year 2, and N400 amplitude in Year 1 predicting vocabulary in Year 2.« less

Intrinsic Factors for Continued ERP Learning: A Precursor to Interdisciplinary ERP Curriculum Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Kuanchin; Razi, Muhammad; Rienzo, Thomas

2011-01-01

Unilateral enterprise resource planning (ERP) curriculum improvements from the instructor's perspective are likely to generate only limited success. Understanding student motivations and beliefs with ERP systems is the missing link to effective ERP education. Relatively little attention in the ERP literature has been given to student learning…

ERP evidence suggests executive dysfunction in ecstasy polydrug users.

PubMed

Roberts, C A; Fairclough, S H; Fisk, J E; Tames, F; Montgomery, C

2013-08-01

Deficits in executive functions such as access to semantic/long-term memory have been shown in ecstasy users in previous research. Equally, there have been many reports of equivocal findings in this area. The current study sought to further investigate behavioural and electro-physiological measures of this executive function in ecstasy users. Twenty ecstasy-polydrug users, 20 non-ecstasy-polydrug users and 20 drug-naïve controls were recruited. Participants completed background questionnaires about their drug use, sleep quality, fluid intelligence and mood state. Each individual also completed a semantic retrieval task whilst 64 channel Electroencephalography (EEG) measures were recorded. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed no between-group differences in behavioural performance on the task. Mixed ANOVA on event-related potential (ERP) components P2, N2 and P3 revealed significant between-group differences in the N2 component. Subsequent exploratory univariate ANOVAs on the N2 component revealed marginally significant between-group differences, generally showing greater negativity at occipito-parietal electrodes in ecstasy users compared to drug-naïve controls. Despite absence of behavioural differences, differences in N2 magnitude are evidence of abnormal executive functioning in ecstasy-polydrug users.

Target-context unitization effect on the familiarity-related FN400: a face recognition exclusion task.

PubMed

Guillaume, Fabrice; Etienne, Yann

2015-03-01

Using two exclusion tasks, the present study examined how the ERP correlates of face recognition are affected by the nature of the information to be retrieved. Intrinsic (facial expression) and extrinsic (background scene) visual information were paired with face identity and constituted the exclusion criterion at test time. Although perceptual information had to be taken into account in both situations, the FN400 old-new effect was observed only for old target faces on the expression-exclusion task, whereas it was found for both old target and old non-target faces in the background-exclusion situation. These results reveal that the FN400, which is generally interpreted as a correlate of familiarity, was modulated by the retrieval of intra-item and intrinsic face information, but not by the retrieval of extrinsic information. The observed effects on the FN400 depended on the nature of the information to be retrieved and its relationship (unitization) to the recognition target. On the other hand, the parietal old-new effect (generally described as an ERP correlate of recollection) reflected the retrieval of both types of contextual features equivalently. The current findings are discussed in relation to recent controversies about the nature of the recognition processes reflected by the ERP correlates of face recognition. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Functional Role of the Disulfide Isomerase ERp57 in Axonal Regeneration.

PubMed

Castillo, Valentina; Oñate, Maritza; Woehlbier, Ute; Rozas, Pablo; Andreu, Catherine; Medinas, Danilo; Valdés, Pamela; Osorio, Fabiola; Mercado, Gabriela; Vidal, René L; Kerr, Bredford; Court, Felipe A; Hetz, Claudio

2015-01-01

ERp57 (also known as grp58 and PDIA3) is a protein disulfide isomerase that catalyzes disulfide bonds formation of glycoproteins as part of the calnexin and calreticulin cycle. ERp57 is markedly upregulated in most common neurodegenerative diseases downstream of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response. Despite accumulating correlative evidence supporting a neuroprotective role of ERp57, the contribution of this foldase to the physiology of the nervous system remains unknown. Here we developed a transgenic mouse model that overexpresses ERp57 in the nervous system under the control of the prion promoter. We analyzed the susceptibility of ERp57 transgenic mice to undergo neurodegeneration. Unexpectedly, ERp57 overexpression did not affect dopaminergic neuron loss and striatal denervation after injection of a Parkinson's disease-inducing neurotoxin. In sharp contrast, ERp57 transgenic animals presented enhanced locomotor recovery after mechanical injury to the sciatic nerve. These protective effects were associated with enhanced myelin removal, macrophage infiltration and axonal regeneration. Our results suggest that ERp57 specifically contributes to peripheral nerve regeneration, whereas its activity is dispensable for the survival of a specific neuronal population of the central nervous system. These results demonstrate for the first time a functional role of a component of the ER proteostasis network in peripheral nerve regeneration.

Visual naming deficits in dyslexia: An ERP investigation of different processing domains.

PubMed

Araújo, Susana; Faísca, Luís; Reis, Alexandra; Marques, J Frederico; Petersson, Karl Magnus

2016-10-01

Naming speed deficits are well documented in developmental dyslexia, expressed by slower naming times and more errors in response to familiar items. Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine at what processing level the deficits in dyslexia emerge during a discrete-naming task. Dyslexic and skilled adult control readers performed a primed object-naming task, in which the relationship between the prime and the target was manipulated along perceptual, semantic and phonological dimensions. A 3×2 design that crossed Relationship Type (Visual, Phonemic Onset, and Semantic) with Relatedness (Related and Unrelated) was used. An attenuated N/P190 - indexing early visual processing - and N300 - which index late visual processing - was observed to pictures preceded by perceptually related (vs. unrelated) primes in the control but not in the dyslexic group. These findings suggest suboptimal processing in early stages of object processing in dyslexia, when integration and mapping of perceptual information to a more form-specific percept in memory take place. On the other hand, both groups showed an N400 effect associated with semantically related pictures (vs. unrelated), taken to reflect intact integration of semantic similarities in both dyslexic and control readers. We also found an electrophysiological effect of phonological priming in the N400 range - that is, an attenuated N400 to objects preceded by phonemic related primes vs. unrelated - while it showed a more widespread distributed and more pronounced over the right hemisphere in the dyslexics. Topographic differences between groups might have originated from a word form encoding process with different characteristics in dyslexics compared to control readers. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

75 FR 51096 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Form N-400; Extension of an Existing Information...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-08-18

... Collection Activities: Form N-400; Extension of an Existing Information Collection; Comment Request ACTION: 60-Day Notice of Information Collection Under Review; Form N- 400, Application for Naturalization... the Form N-400. Should USCIS decide to revise Form N-400 we will advise the public when we publish the...

The effect of short-term training on cardinal and oblique orientation discrimination: an ERP study.

PubMed

Song, Yan; Sun, Li; Wang, You; Zhang, Xuemin; Kang, Jing; Ma, Xiaoli; Yang, Bin; Guan, Yijie; Ding, Yulong

2010-03-01

The adult brain shows remarkable plasticity, as demonstrated by the improvement in most visual discrimination tasks after intensive practice. However, previous studies have demonstrated that practice improved the discrimination only around oblique orientations, while performance around cardinal orientations (vertical or horizontal orientations) remained stable despite extensive training. The two experiments described here used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural substrates underlying different training effects in the two kinds of orientation. Event-related potentials were recorded from subjects when they were trained with a grating orientation discrimination task. Psychophysical threshold measurements were performed before and after the training. For oblique gratings, psychophysical thresholds decreased significantly across training sessions. ERPs showed larger P2 and P3 amplitudes and smaller N1 amplitudes over the parietal/occipital areas with more practice. In line with the psychophysical thresholds, the training effect on the P2 and P3 was specific to stimulus orientation. However, the N1 effect was generalized over differently oriented gratings stimuli. For cardinally oriented gratings, no significant changes were found in the psychophysical thresholds during the training. ERPs still showed similar generalized N1 effect as the oblique gratings. However, the amplitudes of P2 and P3 were unchanged during the whole training. Compared with cardinal orientations, more visual processing stages and later ERP components were involved in the training of oblique orientation discrimination. These results contribute to understanding the neural basis of the asymmetry between cardinal and oblique orientation training effects. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hands-On ERP Learning: Using OpenERP[R], an Alternative to SAP[R

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ayyagari, Ramakrishna

2011-01-01

Recent struggles with ERP systems (Kanaracus, 2010) highlight that teaching ERP skills is still very relevant today. Previous research suggests that knowledge of ERP concepts is more important than skills with any particular ERP package (Strong et al., 2006). However, a review of published studies in "JISE" shows a bias towards commercial ERP…

Real-time processing in picture naming in adults who stutter: ERP evidence

PubMed Central

Maxfield, Nathan D.; Morris, Kalie; Frisch, Stefan A.; Morphew, Kathryn; Constantine, Joseph L.

2014-01-01

Objective The aim was to compare real-time language/cognitive processing in picture naming in adults who stutter (AWS) versus typically-fluent adults (TFA). Methods Participants named pictures preceded by masked prime words. Primes and target picture labels were Identical or mismatched. Priming effects on naming and picture-elicited ERP activity were analyzed. Vocabulary knowledge correlations with these measures were assessed. Results Priming improved naming RTs and accuracy in both groups. RTs were longer for AWS, and correlated positively with receptive vocabulary in TFA. Electrophysiologically, posterior-P1 amplitude negatively correlated with expressive vocabulary in TFA versus receptive vocabulary in AWS. Frontal/temporal-P1 amplitude correlated positively with expressive vocabulary in AWS. Identity priming enhanced frontal/posterior-N2 amplitude in both groups, and attenuated P280 amplitude in AWS. N400 priming was topographically-restricted in AWS. Conclusions Results suggest that conceptual knowledge was perceptually-grounded in expressive vocabulary in TFA versus receptive vocabulary in AWS. Poorer expressive vocabulary in AWS was potentially associated with greater suppression of irrelevant conceptual information. Priming enhanced N2-indexed cognitive control and visual attention in both groups. P280-indexed focal attention attenuated with priming in AWS only. Topographically-restricted N400 priming suggests that lemma/word form connections were weaker in AWS. Significance Real-time language/cognitive processing in picture naming operates differently in AWS. PMID:24910149

Evaluation of post-traumatic anosmia with MRI and chemosensory ERPs.

PubMed

Miao, Xutao; Yang, Ling; Gu, Hua; Ren, Yuanyuan; Chen, Guowei; Liu, Jia; Wei, Yongxiang

2015-08-01

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and chemosensory event-related potentials (ERPs) are important methods to evaluate olfactory function, but there is lack of study to explore the application of MRI and chemosensory ERPs in the patients with traumatic anosmia. The data of 26 post-traumatic anosmic patients and 21 healthy controls were retrospectively surveyed; olfaction and olfactory pathway of all participants were measured clinically using the T&T olfactometer, the Sniffin' Sticks, chemosensory ERPs and MRI. All patients were anosmic based on complaints and clinical examinations. In five patients, the olfactory bulb volume was significantly lower than control group. In 18 patients, the olfactory sulcus (OS) depth was similar to control group, but all the participants had a deeper right OS (right = 7.79 ± 1.31, left = 7.06 ± 1.44, p < 0.01). Olfactory ERPs (oERPs) could be evoked in 17 patients, but these signals showed longer latencies and lower amplitude than controls in the N1 (latency p < 0.05, amplitude p < 0.01) and P2 (latency p < 0.01, amplitude p < 0.05) waves. Nine traumatic anosmic patients had no identifiable oERPs; most of them had olfactory center injury. Trigeminal ERPs were detected in all anosmic patients and controls; patients had longer latencies for N1 (p < 0.05) and P2 (p < 0.05) waves, while there was no similar change in amplitude. Older subjects had smaller OB volume and OS depth. Closed head injury could induce anosmia; the severity extent, injury site and subsequent consciousness are related to the olfaction. oERP is the gold standard for olfactory subjective examination; MRI could indicate the lesions on the olfactory pathway and reflect the possibility of detectable oERPs.

Neural Indices of Semantic Processing in Early Childhood Distinguish Eventual Stuttering Persistence and Recovery.

PubMed

Kreidler, Kathryn; Hampton Wray, Amanda; Usler, Evan; Weber, Christine

2017-11-09

Maturation of neural processes for language may lag in some children who stutter (CWS), and event-related potentials (ERPs) distinguish CWS who have recovered from those who have persisted. The current study explores whether ERPs indexing semantic processing may distinguish children who will eventually persist in stuttering (CWS-ePersisted) from those who will recover from stuttering (CWS-eRecovered). Fifty-six 5-year-old children with normal receptive language listened to naturally spoken sentences in a story context. ERP components elicited for semantic processing (N400, late positive component [LPC]) were compared for CWS-ePersisted, CWS-eRecovered, and children who do not stutter (CWNS). The N400 elicited by semantic violations had a more focal scalp distribution (left lateralized and less anterior) in the CWS-eRecovered compared with CWS-ePersisted. Although the LPC elicited in CWS-eRecovered and CWNS did not differ, the LPC elicited in the CWS-ePersisted was smaller in amplitude compared with that in CWNS. ERPs elicited in 5-year-old CWS-eRecovered compared with CWS-ePersisted suggest that future recovery from stuttering may be associated with earlier maturation of semantic processes in the preschool years. Subtle differences in ERP indices offer a window into neural maturation processes for language and may help distinguish the course of stuttering development.

ERPs recorded during early second language exposure predict syntactic learning.

PubMed

Batterink, Laura; Neville, Helen J

2014-09-01

Millions of adults worldwide are faced with the task of learning a second language (L2). Understanding the neural mechanisms that support this learning process is an important area of scientific inquiry. However, most previous studies on the neural mechanisms underlying L2 acquisition have focused on characterizing the results of learning, relying upon end-state outcome measures in which learning is assessed after it has occurred, rather than on the learning process itself. In this study, we adopted a novel and more direct approach to investigate neural mechanisms engaged during L2 learning, in which we recorded ERPs from beginning adult learners as they were exposed to an unfamiliar L2 for the first time. Learners' proficiency in the L2 was then assessed behaviorally using a grammaticality judgment task, and ERP data acquired during initial L2 exposure were sorted as a function of performance on this task. High-proficiency learners showed a larger N100 effect to open-class content words compared with closed-class function words, whereas low-proficiency learners did not show a significant N100 difference between open- and closed-class words. In contrast, amplitude of the N400 word category effect correlated with learners' L2 comprehension, rather than predicting syntactic learning. Taken together, these results indicate that learners who spontaneously direct greater attention to open- rather than closed-class words when processing L2 input show better syntactic learning, suggesting a link between selective attention to open-class content words and acquisition of basic morphosyntactic rules. These findings highlight the importance of selective attention mechanisms for L2 acquisition.

ERP signs of categorical and supra-categorical processing of visual information.

PubMed

Zani, Alberto; Marsili, Giulia; Senerchia, Annapaola; Orlandi, Andrea; Citron, Francesca M M; Rizzi, Ezia; Proverbio, Alice M

2015-01-01

, overall most likely related to different stages of analysis of the greater endomorphy of these shape groups. Conversely, an enhanced fronto-central and fronto-lateral N2 as well as a centro-parietal N400 to man-made objects and different-category pairs were found, possibly indexing processing of these entities' lower endomorphy and isomorphy at the basic features and semantic levels, respectively. Overall, the present ERP results revealed shared and distinct mechanisms of access to supra-categorical and categorical knowledge in the same way in which shared and distinct neural representations underlie the processing of diverse semantic categories. Additionally, they outlined the serial nature of categorical and supra-categorical representations, indicating the sequential steps of access to these separate knowledge types. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Syntactic learning by mere exposure - An ERP study in adult learners

PubMed Central

Mueller, Jutta L; Oberecker, Regine; Friederici, Angela D

2009-01-01

Background Artificial language studies have revealed the remarkable ability of humans to extract syntactic structures from a continuous sound stream by mere exposure. However, it remains unclear whether the processes acquired in such tasks are comparable to those applied during normal language processing. The present study compares the ERPs to auditory processing of simple Italian sentences in native and non-native speakers after brief exposure to Italian sentences of a similar structure. The sentences contained a non-adjacent dependency between an auxiliary and the morphologically marked suffix of the verb. Participants were presented four alternating learning and testing phases. During learning phases only correct sentences were presented while during testing phases 50 percent of the sentences contained a grammatical violation. Results The non-native speakers successfully learned the dependency and displayed an N400-like negativity and a subsequent anteriorily distributed positivity in response to rule violations. The native Italian group showed an N400 followed by a P600 effect. Conclusion The presence of the P600 suggests that native speakers applied a grammatical rule. In contrast, non-native speakers appeared to use a lexical form-based processing strategy. Thus, the processing mechanisms acquired in the language learning task were only partly comparable to those applied by competent native speakers. PMID:19640301

Syntactic learning by mere exposure--an ERP study in adult learners.

PubMed

Mueller, Jutta L; Oberecker, Regine; Friederici, Angela D

2009-07-29

Artificial language studies have revealed the remarkable ability of humans to extract syntactic structures from a continuous sound stream by mere exposure. However, it remains unclear whether the processes acquired in such tasks are comparable to those applied during normal language processing. The present study compares the ERPs to auditory processing of simple Italian sentences in native and non-native speakers after brief exposure to Italian sentences of a similar structure. The sentences contained a non-adjacent dependency between an auxiliary and the morphologically marked suffix of the verb. Participants were presented four alternating learning and testing phases. During learning phases only correct sentences were presented while during testing phases 50 percent of the sentences contained a grammatical violation. The non-native speakers successfully learned the dependency and displayed an N400-like negativity and a subsequent anteriorily distributed positivity in response to rule violations. The native Italian group showed an N400 followed by a P600 effect. The presence of the P600 suggests that native speakers applied a grammatical rule. In contrast, non-native speakers appeared to use a lexical form-based processing strategy. Thus, the processing mechanisms acquired in the language learning task were only partly comparable to those applied by competent native speakers.

Face Context Influences Local Part Processing: An ERP Study.

PubMed

Zhang, Hong; Sun, Yaoru; Zhao, Lun

2017-09-01

Perception of face parts on the basis of features is thought to be different from perception of whole faces, which is more based on configural information. Face context is also suggested to play an important role in face processing. To investigate how face context influences the early-stage perception of facial local parts, we used an oddball paradigm that tested perceptual stages of face processing rather than recognition. We recorded the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by whole faces and face parts presented in four conditions (upright-normal, upright-thatcherised, inverted-normal and inverted-thatcherised), as well as the ERPs elicited by non-face objects (whole houses and house parts) with corresponding conditions. The results showed that face context significantly affected the N170 with increased amplitudes and earlier peak latency for upright normal faces. Removing face context delayed the P1 latency but did not affect the P1 amplitude prominently for both upright and inverted normal faces. Across all conditions, neither the N170 nor the P1 was modulated by house context. The significant changes on the N170 and P1 components revealed that face context influences local part processing at the early stage of face processing and this context effect might be specific for face perception. We further suggested that perceptions of whole faces and face parts are functionally distinguished.

The acceleration of spoken-word processing in children's native-language acquisition: an ERP cohort study.

PubMed

Ojima, Shiro; Matsuba-Kurita, Hiroko; Nakamura, Naoko; Hagiwara, Hiroko

2011-04-01

Healthy adults can identify spoken words at a remarkable speed, by incrementally analyzing word-onset information. It is currently unknown how this adult-level speed of spoken-word processing emerges during children's native-language acquisition. In a picture-word mismatch paradigm, we manipulated the semantic congruency between picture contexts and spoken words, and recorded event-related potential (ERP) responses to the words. Previous similar studies focused on the N400 response, but we focused instead on the onsets of semantic congruency effects (N200 or Phonological Mismatch Negativity), which contain critical information for incremental spoken-word processing. We analyzed ERPs obtained longitudinally from two age cohorts of 40 primary-school children (total n=80) in a 3-year period. Children first tested at 7 years of age showed earlier onsets of congruency effects (by approximately 70ms) when tested 2 years later (i.e., at age 9). Children first tested at 9 years of age did not show such shortening of onset latencies 2 years later (i.e., at age 11). Overall, children's onset latencies at age 9 appeared similar to those of adults. These data challenge the previous hypothesis that word processing is well established at age 7. Instead they support the view that the acceleration of spoken-word processing continues beyond age 7. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Semantic integration of differently asynchronous audio-visual information in videos of real-world events in cognitive processing: an ERP study.

PubMed

Liu, Baolin; Wu, Guangning; Wang, Zhongning; Ji, Xiang

2011-07-01

In the real world, some of the auditory and visual information received by the human brain are temporally asynchronous. How is such information integrated in cognitive processing in the brain? In this paper, we aimed to study the semantic integration of differently asynchronous audio-visual information in cognitive processing using ERP (event-related potential) method. Subjects were presented with videos of real world events, in which the auditory and visual information are temporally asynchronous. When the critical action was prior to the sound, sounds incongruous with the preceding critical actions elicited a N400 effect when compared to congruous condition. This result demonstrates that semantic contextual integration indexed by N400 also applies to cognitive processing of multisensory information. In addition, the N400 effect is early in latency when contrasted with other visually induced N400 studies. It is shown that cross modal information is facilitated in time when contrasted with visual information in isolation. When the sound was prior to the critical action, a larger late positive wave was observed under the incongruous condition compared to congruous condition. P600 might represent a reanalysis process, in which the mismatch between the critical action and the preceding sound was evaluated. It is shown that environmental sound may affect the cognitive processing of a visual event. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Switching of auditory attention in "cocktail-party" listening: ERP evidence of cueing effects in younger and older adults.

PubMed

Getzmann, Stephan; Jasny, Julian; Falkenstein, Michael

2017-02-01

Verbal communication in a "cocktail-party situation" is a major challenge for the auditory system. In particular, changes in target speaker usually result in declined speech perception. Here, we investigated whether speech cues indicating a subsequent change in target speaker reduce the costs of switching in younger and older adults. We employed event-related potential (ERP) measures and a speech perception task, in which sequences of short words were simultaneously presented by four speakers. Changes in target speaker were either unpredictable or semantically cued by a word within the target stream. Cued changes resulted in a less decreased performance than uncued changes in both age groups. The ERP analysis revealed shorter latencies in the change-related N400 and late positive complex (LPC) after cued changes, suggesting an acceleration in context updating and attention switching. Thus, both younger and older listeners used semantic cues to prepare changes in speaker setting. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Dissociation between arithmetic relatedness and distance effects is modulated by task properties: an ERP study comparing explicit vs. implicit arithmetic processing.

PubMed

Avancini, Chiara; Galfano, Giovanni; Szűcs, Dénes

2014-12-01

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have detected several characteristic consecutive amplitude modulations in both implicit and explicit mental arithmetic tasks. Implicit tasks typically focused on the arithmetic relatedness effect (in which performance is affected by semantic associations between numbers) while explicit tasks focused on the distance effect (in which performance is affected by the numerical difference of to-be-compared numbers). Both task types elicit morphologically similar ERP waves which were explained in functionally similar terms. However, to date, the relationship between these tasks has not been investigated explicitly and systematically. In order to fill this gap, here we examined whether ERP effects and their underlying cognitive processes in implicit and explicit mental arithmetic tasks differ from each other. The same group of participants performed both an implicit number-matching task (in which arithmetic knowledge is task-irrelevant) and an explicit arithmetic-verification task (in which arithmetic knowledge is task-relevant). 129-channel ERP data differed substantially between tasks. In the number-matching task, the arithmetic relatedness effect appeared as a negativity over left-frontal electrodes whereas the distance effect was more prominent over right centro-parietal electrodes. In the verification task, all probe types elicited similar N2b waves over right fronto-central electrodes and typical centro-parietal N400 effects over central electrodes. The distance effect appeared as an early-rising, long-lasting left parietal negativity. We suggest that ERP effects in the implicit task reflect access to semantic memory networks and to magnitude discrimination, respectively. In contrast, effects of expectation violation are more prominent in explicit tasks and may mask more delicate cognitive processes. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Sensory and semantic activations evoked by action attributes of manipulable objects: Evidence from ERPs

PubMed Central

Lee, Chia-lin; Huang, Hsu-Wen; Federmeier, Kara D.; Buxbaum, Laurel J.

2018-01-01

“Two route” theories of object-related action processing posit different temporal activation profiles of grasp-to-move actions (rapidly evoked based on object structure) versus skilled use actions (more slowly activated based on semantic knowledge). We capitalized on the exquisite temporal resolution and multidimensionality of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to directly test this hypothesis. Participants viewed manipulable objects (e.g., calculator) preceded by objects sharing either “grasp”, “use”, or no action attributes (e.g., bar of soap, keyboard, earring, respectively), as well as by action-unrelated but taxonomically-related objects (e.g., abacus); participants judged whether the two objects were related. The results showed more positive responses to “grasp-to-move” primed objects than “skilled use” primed objects or unprimed objects starting in the P1 (0–150 ms) time window and continuing onto the subsequent N1 and P2 components (150–300 ms), suggesting that only “grasp-to-move”, but not “skilled use”, actions may facilitate visual attention to object attributes. Furthermore, reliably reduced N400s (300–500 ms), an index of semantic processing, were observed to taxonomically primed and “skilled use” primed objects relative to unprimed objects, suggesting that “skilled use” action attributes are a component of distributed, multimodal semantic representations of objects. Together, our findings provide evidence supporting two-route theories by demonstrating that “grasp-to-move” and “skilled use” actions impact different aspects of object processing and highlight the relationship of “skilled use” information to other aspects of semantic memory. PMID:29183777

ERP correlates of processing the auditory consequences of own versus observed actions.

PubMed

Ghio, Marta; Scharmach, Katrin; Bellebaum, Christian

2018-06-01

Research has so far focused on neural mechanisms that allow us to predict the sensory consequences of our own actions, thus also contributing to ascribing them to ourselves as agents. Less attention has been devoted to processing the sensory consequences of observed actions ascribed to another human agent. Focusing on audition, there is consistent evidence of a reduction of the auditory N1 ERP for self- versus externally generated sounds, while ERP correlates of processing sensory consequences of observed actions are mainly unexplored. In a between-groups ERP study, we compared sounds generated by self-performed (self group) or observed (observation group) button presses with externally generated sounds, which were presented either intermixed with action-generated sounds or in a separate condition. Results revealed an overall reduction of the N1 amplitude for processing action- versus externally generated sounds in both the intermixed and the separate condition, with no difference between the groups. Further analyses, however, suggested that an N1 attenuation effect relative to the intermixed condition at frontal electrode sites might exist only for the self but not for the observation group. For both groups, we found a reduction of the P2 amplitude for processing action- versus all externally generated sounds. We discuss whether the N1 and the P2 reduction can be interpreted in terms of predictive mechanisms for both action execution and observation, and to what extent these components might reflect also the feeling of (self) agency and the judgment of agency (i.e., ascribing agency either to the self or to others). © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Validation of the Emotiv EPOC® EEG gaming system for measuring research quality auditory ERPs

PubMed Central

Mousikou, Petroula; Mahajan, Yatin; de Lissa, Peter; Thie, Johnson; McArthur, Genevieve

2013-01-01

Background. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) have proved useful in investigating the role of auditory processing in cognitive disorders such as developmental dyslexia, specific language impairment (SLI), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, and autism. However, laboratory recordings of auditory ERPs can be lengthy, uncomfortable, or threatening for some participants – particularly children. Recently, a commercial gaming electroencephalography (EEG) system has been developed that is portable, inexpensive, and easy to set up. In this study we tested if auditory ERPs measured using a gaming EEG system (Emotiv EPOC®, www.emotiv.com) were equivalent to those measured by a widely-used, laboratory-based, research EEG system (Neuroscan). Methods. We simultaneously recorded EEGs with the research and gaming EEG systems, whilst presenting 21 adults with 566 standard (1000 Hz) and 100 deviant (1200 Hz) tones under passive (non-attended) and active (attended) conditions. The onset of each tone was marked in the EEGs using a parallel port pulse (Neuroscan) or a stimulus-generated electrical pulse injected into the O1 and O2 channels (Emotiv EPOC®). These markers were used to calculate research and gaming EEG system late auditory ERPs (P1, N1, P2, N2, and P3 peaks) and the mismatch negativity (MMN) in active and passive listening conditions for each participant. Results. Analyses were restricted to frontal sites as these are most commonly reported in auditory ERP research. Intra-class correlations (ICCs) indicated that the morphology of the research and gaming EEG system late auditory ERP waveforms were similar across all participants, but that the research and gaming EEG system MMN waveforms were only similar for participants with non-noisy MMN waveforms (N = 11 out of 21). Peak amplitude and latency measures revealed no significant differences between the size or the timing of the auditory P1, N1, P2, N2, P3, and MMN peaks. Conclusions

13 CFR 147.400 - What are my responsibilities as a(n) SBA awarding official?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... Awarding Officials § 147.400 What are my responsibilities as a(n) SBA awarding official? As a(n) SBA awarding official, you must obtain each recipient's agreement, as a condition of the award, to comply with...(n) SBA awarding official? 147.400 Section 147.400 Business Credit and Assistance SMALL BUSINESS...

Manipulating Bodily Presence Affects Cross-Modal Spatial Attention: A Virtual-Reality-Based ERP Study.

PubMed

Harjunen, Ville J; Ahmed, Imtiaj; Jacucci, Giulio; Ravaja, Niklas; Spapé, Michiel M

2017-01-01

Earlier studies have revealed cross-modal visuo-tactile interactions in endogenous spatial attention. The current research used event-related potentials (ERPs) and virtual reality (VR) to identify how the visual cues of the perceiver's body affect visuo-tactile interaction in endogenous spatial attention and at what point in time the effect takes place. A bimodal oddball task with lateralized tactile and visual stimuli was presented in two VR conditions, one with and one without visible hands, and one VR-free control with hands in view. Participants were required to silently count one type of stimulus and ignore all other stimuli presented in irrelevant modality or location. The presence of hands was found to modulate early and late components of somatosensory and visual evoked potentials. For sensory-perceptual stages, the presence of virtual or real hands was found to amplify attention-related negativity on the somatosensory N140 and cross-modal interaction in somatosensory and visual P200. For postperceptual stages, an amplified N200 component was obtained in somatosensory and visual evoked potentials, indicating increased response inhibition in response to non-target stimuli. The effect of somatosensory, but not visual, N200 enhanced when the virtual hands were present. The findings suggest that bodily presence affects sustained cross-modal spatial attention between vision and touch and that this effect is specifically present in ERPs related to early- and late-sensory processing, as well as response inhibition, but do not affect later attention and memory-related P3 activity. Finally, the experiments provide commeasurable scenarios for the estimation of the signal and noise ratio to quantify effects related to the use of a head mounted display (HMD). However, despite valid a-priori reasons for fearing signal interference due to a HMD, we observed no significant drop in the robustness of our ERP measurements.

Manipulating Bodily Presence Affects Cross-Modal Spatial Attention: A Virtual-Reality-Based ERP Study

PubMed Central

Harjunen, Ville J.; Ahmed, Imtiaj; Jacucci, Giulio; Ravaja, Niklas; Spapé, Michiel M.

2017-01-01

Earlier studies have revealed cross-modal visuo-tactile interactions in endogenous spatial attention. The current research used event-related potentials (ERPs) and virtual reality (VR) to identify how the visual cues of the perceiver’s body affect visuo-tactile interaction in endogenous spatial attention and at what point in time the effect takes place. A bimodal oddball task with lateralized tactile and visual stimuli was presented in two VR conditions, one with and one without visible hands, and one VR-free control with hands in view. Participants were required to silently count one type of stimulus and ignore all other stimuli presented in irrelevant modality or location. The presence of hands was found to modulate early and late components of somatosensory and visual evoked potentials. For sensory-perceptual stages, the presence of virtual or real hands was found to amplify attention-related negativity on the somatosensory N140 and cross-modal interaction in somatosensory and visual P200. For postperceptual stages, an amplified N200 component was obtained in somatosensory and visual evoked potentials, indicating increased response inhibition in response to non-target stimuli. The effect of somatosensory, but not visual, N200 enhanced when the virtual hands were present. The findings suggest that bodily presence affects sustained cross-modal spatial attention between vision and touch and that this effect is specifically present in ERPs related to early- and late-sensory processing, as well as response inhibition, but do not affect later attention and memory-related P3 activity. Finally, the experiments provide commeasurable scenarios for the estimation of the signal and noise ratio to quantify effects related to the use of a head mounted display (HMD). However, despite valid a-priori reasons for fearing signal interference due to a HMD, we observed no significant drop in the robustness of our ERP measurements. PMID:28275346

Using ERPs to Investigate Valence Processing in the Affect Misattribution Procedure

PubMed Central

Von Gunten, Curtis D.; Bartholow, Bruce D.; Scherer, Laura D.

2016-01-01

The construct validity of the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) has been challenged by theories proposing that the task does not actually measure affect misattribution. The current study tested the validity of the AMP as a measure of affect misattribution by examining three components of the event-related potential (ERP) known to be associated with the allocation of motivated attention. Results revealed that ERP amplitudes varied in response to affectively ambiguous targets as a function of the valence of preceding primes. Furthermore, differences in ERP responses to the targets were largely similar to differences in ERPs elicited by the primes. The existence of valence differentiation in both the prime-locked and the target-locked ERPs, along with the similarity in this differentiation, provides evidence that the affective content of the primes is psychologically registered, and that this content influences the processing of the subsequent, evaluatively ambiguous targets, both of which are required if the priming effects found in the AMP are the result of affect misattribution. However, the behavioral priming effect was uncorrelated with ERP amplitudes, leaving some question as to the locus of this effect in the information-processing system. Findings are discussed in light of the strengths and weaknesses of using ERPs to understand the priming effects in the AMP. PMID:27754548

Positive emotion modulates cognitive control: an event-related potentials study.

PubMed

Xue, Song; Cui, Jingjing; Wang, Kangcheng; Zhang, Songyan; Qiu, Jiang; Luo, Yuejia

2013-04-01

There is substantial evidence to indicate that negative emotion can modulate cognitive control processing. However, only a few studies have investigated this effect with positive emotion. Therefore, the present study explored the electrophysiological correlates of the impact of positive emotional stimuli on cognitive control, using event-related potentials (ERPs). Sixteen healthy young adults completed a modified Simon task (Simon, 1969). Behavioral data indicated that reaction times were faster for positive emotional stimuli than for neutral emotional stimuli in the incongruent condition, but not in the congruent condition, which suggested that positive emotion expedited conflict resolution. The ERP data showed that two negative ERP components (N300-400 and N450-550) were associated with the positive emotional stimuli in the incongruent minus congruent condition. It is suggested that these components may respectively be related to the conflict monitoring (N300-400) and response selection (N450-550) stages of cognitive control processing. Overall, our results indicated that positive emotion could facilitate cognitive control processing. These results are in line with the neuropsychological theory, according to which, positive emotion could modulate cognitive control mediated by increased dopamine levels in frontal brain areas. © 2013 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2013 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Conceptual processing in music as revealed by N400 effects on words and musical targets.

PubMed

Daltrozzo, Jérôme; Schön, Daniele

2009-10-01

The cognitive processing of concepts, that is, abstract general ideas, has been mostly studied with language. However, other domains, such as music, can also convey concepts. Koelsch et al. [Koelsch, S., Kasper, E., Sammler, D., Schulze, K., Gunter, T., & Friederici, A. D. Music, language and meaning: Brain signatures of semantic processing. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 302-307, 2004] showed that 10 sec of music can influence the semantic processing of words. However, the length of the musical excerpts did not allow the authors to study the effect of words on musical targets. In this study, we decided to replicate Koelsch et al. findings using 1-sec musical excerpts (Experiment 1). This allowed us to study the reverse influence, namely, of a linguistic context on conceptual processing of musical excerpts (Experiment 2). In both experiments, we recorded behavioral and electrophysiological responses while participants were presented 50 related and 50 unrelated pairs (context/target). Experiments 1 and 2 showed a larger N400 component of the event-related brain potentials to targets following a conceptually unrelated compared to a related context. The presence of an N400 effect with musical targets suggests that music may convey concepts. The relevance of these results for the comprehension of music as a structured set of conceptual units and for the domain specificity of the mechanisms underlying N400 effects are discussed.

Integrating gender and number information in Spanish word pairs: an ERP study.

PubMed

Barber, Horacio; Carreiras, Manuel

2003-06-01

The aim of the current study was to explore the integration processes of gender and number morphological features, since it has been proposed that grammatical gender and number features might be associated with different strength with the word stem in lexical representation. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded using a 128-channel sensor net while twenty-four volunteers read Spanish word pairs and performed a syntactic judgment task. The word pairs which could agree or disagree in gender or number or in gender and number at the same time, were formed by a noun and an adjective (e.g. faro-alto [lighthouse-high]). A negativity around 400 msec with posterior distribution, which has been related to lexical integration processes, was found in response to both gender and number violations. No differences were found between gender disagreement, number disagreement and the double disagreement. Therefore, ERPs suggest that integration of gender and number features may not be different, and that the detection of disagreement may work under a binary state, since the double disagreement condition did not differ from the others. In addition, a subsequent component (identified as P3) showed delayed latencies in the gender disagreement condition as compared to the number disagreement condition, while the double disagreement conditions showed a shorter peak latency than the other two disagreement conditions and similar to the agreement condition. The variations in the latency of the P3 component, which has been related to categorization processes, suggest that these processes are quickly triggered by the accumulation of two incongruent as compared to one disagreement features, and that reanalysis is costlier in the case of gender disagreement as compared to the number disagreement.

Modulations of 'late' event-related brain potentials in humans by dynamic audiovisual speech stimuli.

PubMed

Lebib, Riadh; Papo, David; Douiri, Abdel; de Bode, Stella; Gillon Dowens, Margaret; Baudonnière, Pierre-Marie

2004-11-30

Lipreading reliably improve speech perception during face-to-face conversation. Within the range of good dubbing, however, adults tolerate some audiovisual (AV) discrepancies and lipreading, then, can give rise to confusion. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to study the perceptual strategies governing the intermodal processing of dynamic and bimodal speech stimuli, either congruently dubbed or not. Electrophysiological analyses revealed that non-coherent audiovisual dubbings modulated in amplitude an endogenous ERP component, the N300, we compared to a 'N400-like effect' reflecting the difficulty to integrate these conflicting pieces of information. This result adds further support for the existence of a cerebral system underlying 'integrative processes' lato sensu. Further studies should take advantage of this 'N400-like effect' with AV speech stimuli to open new perspectives in the domain of psycholinguistics.

Early ERP Modulation for Task-Irrelevant Subliminal Faces

PubMed Central

Pegna, Alan J.; Darque, Alexandra; Berrut, Claire; Khateb, Asaid

2011-01-01

A number of investigations have reported that emotional faces can be processed subliminally, and that they give rise to specific patterns of brain activation in the absence of awareness. Recent event-related potential (ERP) studies have suggested that electrophysiological differences occur early in time (<200 ms) in response to backward-masked emotional faces. These findings have been taken as evidence of a rapid non-conscious pathway, which would allow threatening stimuli to be processed rapidly and subsequently allow appropriate avoidance action to be taken. However, for this to be the case, subliminal processing should arise even if the threatening stimulus is not attended. This point has in fact not yet been clearly established. In this ERP study, we investigated whether subliminal processing of fearful faces occurs outside the focus of attention. Fourteen healthy participants performed a line judgment task while fearful and non-fearful (happy or neutral) faces were presented both subliminally and supraliminally. ERPs were compared across the four experimental conditions (i.e., subliminal and supraliminal; fearful and non-fearful). The earliest differences between fearful and non-fearful faces appeared as an enhanced posterior negativity for the former at 170 ms (the N170 component) over right temporo-occipital electrodes. This difference was observed for both subliminal (p < 0.05) and supraliminal presentations (p < 0.01). Our results confirm that subliminal processing of fearful faces occurs early in the course of visual processing, and more importantly, that this arises even when the subject's attention is engaged in an incidental task. PMID:21687457

Early ERP Modulation for Task-Irrelevant Subliminal Faces.

PubMed

Pegna, Alan J; Darque, Alexandra; Berrut, Claire; Khateb, Asaid

2011-01-01

A number of investigations have reported that emotional faces can be processed subliminally, and that they give rise to specific patterns of brain activation in the absence of awareness. Recent event-related potential (ERP) studies have suggested that electrophysiological differences occur early in time (<200 ms) in response to backward-masked emotional faces. These findings have been taken as evidence of a rapid non-conscious pathway, which would allow threatening stimuli to be processed rapidly and subsequently allow appropriate avoidance action to be taken. However, for this to be the case, subliminal processing should arise even if the threatening stimulus is not attended. This point has in fact not yet been clearly established. In this ERP study, we investigated whether subliminal processing of fearful faces occurs outside the focus of attention. Fourteen healthy participants performed a line judgment task while fearful and non-fearful (happy or neutral) faces were presented both subliminally and supraliminally. ERPs were compared across the four experimental conditions (i.e., subliminal and supraliminal; fearful and non-fearful). The earliest differences between fearful and non-fearful faces appeared as an enhanced posterior negativity for the former at 170 ms (the N170 component) over right temporo-occipital electrodes. This difference was observed for both subliminal (p < 0.05) and supraliminal presentations (p < 0.01). Our results confirm that subliminal processing of fearful faces occurs early in the course of visual processing, and more importantly, that this arises even when the subject's attention is engaged in an incidental task.

Action-related auditory ERP attenuation: Paradigms and hypotheses.

PubMed

Horváth, János

2015-11-11

A number studies have shown that the auditory N1 event-related potential (ERP) is attenuated when elicited by self-induced or self-generated sounds. Because N1 is a correlate of auditory feature- and event-detection, it was generally assumed that N1-attenuation reflected the cancellation of auditory re-afference, enabled by the internal forward modeling of the predictable sensory consequences of the given action. Focusing on paradigms utilizing non-speech actions, the present review summarizes recent progress on action-related auditory attenuation. Following a critical analysis of the most widely used, contingent paradigm, two further hypotheses on the possible causes of action-related auditory ERP attenuation are presented. The attention hypotheses suggest that auditory ERP attenuation is brought about by a temporary division of attention between the action and the auditory stimulation. The pre-activation hypothesis suggests that the attenuation is caused by the activation of a sensory template during the initiation of the action, which interferes with the incoming stimulation. Although each hypothesis can account for a number of findings, none of them can accommodate the whole spectrum of results. It is suggested that a better understanding of auditory ERP attenuation phenomena could be achieved by systematic investigations of the types of actions, the degree of action-effect contingency, and the temporal characteristics of action-effect contingency representation-buildup and -deactivation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Prediction and Attention. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Masked priming and ERPs dissociate maturation of orthographic and semantic components of visual word recognition in children

PubMed Central

Eddy, Marianna D.; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Mitra, Priya; Gabrieli, John D. E.

2014-01-01

This study examined the time-course of reading single words in children and adults using masked repetition priming and the recording of event-related potentials. The N250 and N400 repetition priming effects were used to characterize form- and meaning-level processing, respectively. Children had larger amplitude N250 effects than adults for both shorter and longer duration primes. Children did not differ from adults on the N400 effect. The difference on the N250 suggests that automaticity for form processing is still maturing in children relative to adults, while the lack of differentiation on the N400 effect suggests that meaning processing is relatively mature by late childhood. The overall similarity in the children’s repetition priming effects to adults’ effects is in line with theories of reading acquisition, according to which children rapidly transition to an orthographic strategy for fast access to semantic information from print. PMID:24313638

Valence interacts with the early ERP old/new effect and arousal with the sustained ERP old/new effect for affective pictures.

PubMed

Van Strien, Jan W; Langeslag, Sandra J E; Strekalova, Nadja J; Gootjes, Liselotte; Franken, Ingmar H A

2009-01-28

To examine whether valence and arousal influence recognition memory during early automatic or during more sustained processes, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 21 women were recorded while they made old/new judgments in a continuous recognition task with pictures from the International Affective Picture System. The pictures were presented twice and differed in emotional valence and arousal. The P1 peak and four time windows were investigated: 200-300 ms, 300-400 ms, 400-600 ms, and 750-1000 ms after stimulus onset. There was a robust old/new effect starting in the 200-300 ms epoch and lasting all time windows. The valence effect was mainly present in the P1 peak and the 200-400 ms epoch, whereas the arousal effect was found in the 300-1000 ms epoch. Exploratory sLORETA analyses dissociated valence-dependent ventromedial prefrontal activity and arousal-dependent occipital activity in the 350-380 ms time window. Valence interacted with the 200-400 ms old/new effect at central and frontal sites. Arousal interacted with the 750-1000 ms old/new effect at posterior sites. It is concluded that valence influences fast recognition memory, while arousal may influence sustained encoding.

N400 brain responses to spoken phrases paired with photographs of scenes: implications for visual scene displays in AAC systems.

PubMed

Wilkinson, Krista M; Stutzman, Allyson; Seisler, Andrea

2015-03-01

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems are often implemented for individuals whose speech cannot meet their full communication needs. One type of aided display is called a Visual Scene Display (VSD). VSDs consist of integrated scenes (such as photographs) in which language concepts are embedded. Often, the representations of concepts on VSDs are perceptually similar to their referents. Given this physical resemblance, one may ask how well VSDs support development of symbolic functioning. We used brain imaging techniques to examine whether matches and mismatches between the content of spoken messages and photographic images of scenes evoke neural activity similar to activity that occurs to spoken or written words. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 15 college students who were shown photographs paired with spoken phrases that were either matched or mismatched to the concepts embedded within each photograph. Of interest was the N400 component, a negative deflecting wave 400 ms post-stimulus that is considered to be an index of semantic functioning. An N400 response in the mismatched condition (but not the matched) would replicate brain responses to traditional linguistic symbols. An N400 was found, exclusively in the mismatched condition, suggesting that mismatches between spoken messages and VSD-type representations set the stage for the N400 in ways similar to traditional linguistic symbols.

The detection of higher-order acoustic transitions is reflected in the N1 ERP.

PubMed

Weise, Annekathrin; Schröger, Erich; Horváth, János

2018-01-30

The auditory system features various types of dedicated change detectors enabling the rapid parsing of auditory stimulation into distinct events. The activity of such detectors is reflected by the N1 ERP. Interestingly, certain acoustic transitions show an asymmetric N1 elicitation pattern: whereas first-order transitions (e.g., a change from a segment of constant frequency to a frequency glide [c-to-g change]) elicit N1, higher-order transitions (e.g., glide-to-constant [g-to-c] changes) do not. Consensus attributes this asymmetry to the absence of any available sensory mechanism that is able to rapidly detect higher-order changes. In contrast, our study provides compelling evidence for such a mechanism. We collected electrophysiological and behavioral data in a transient-detection paradigm. In each condition, a random (50%-50%) sequence of two types of tones occurred, which did or did not contain a transition (e.g., c-to-g and constant stimuli or g-to-c and glide tones). Additionally, the rate of pitch change of the glide varied (i.e., 10 vs. 40 semitones per second) in order to increase the number of responding neural assemblies. The rate manipulation modulated transient ERPs and behavioral detection performance for g-to-c transitions much stronger than for c-to-g transitions. The topographic and tomographic analyses suggest that the N1 response to c-to-g and also to g-to-c transitions emerged from the superior temporal gyrus. This strongly supports a sensory mechanism that allows the fast detection of higher-order changes. © 2018 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Affective ERP Processing in a Visual Oddball Task: Arousal, Valence, and Gender

PubMed Central

Rozenkrants, Bella; Polich, John

2008-01-01

Objective To assess affective event-related brain potentials (ERPs) using visual pictures that were highly distinct on arousal level/valence category ratings and a response task. Methods Images from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS) were selected to obtain distinct affective arousal (low, high) and valence (negative, positive) rating levels. The pictures were used as target stimuli in an oddball paradigm, with a visual pattern as the standard stimulus. Participants were instructed to press a button whenever a picture occurred and to ignore the standard. Task performance and response time did not differ across conditions. Results High-arousal compared to low-arousal stimuli produced larger amplitudes for the N2, P3, early slow wave, and late slow wave components. Valence amplitude effects were weak overall and originated primarily from the later waveform components and interactions with electrode position. Gender differences were negligible. Conclusion The findings suggest that arousal level is the primary determinant of affective oddball processing, and valence minimally influences ERP amplitude. Significance Affective processing engages selective attentional mechanisms that are primarily sensitive to the arousal properties of emotional stimuli. The application and nature of task demands are important considerations for interpreting these effects. PMID:18783987

Combat veterans with PTSD after mild TBI exhibit greater ERPs from posterior-medial cortical areas while appraising facial features.

PubMed

Shu, I-Wei; Onton, Julie A; Prabhakar, Nitin; O'Connell, Ryan M; Simmons, Alan N; Matthews, Scott C

2014-02-01

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) worsens prognosis following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Combat personnel with histories of mTBI exhibit abnormal activation of distributed brain networks-including emotion processing and default mode networks. How developing PTSD further affects these abnormalities has not been directly examined. We recorded electroencephalography in combat veterans with histories of mTBI, but without active PTSD (mTBI only, n=16) and combat veterans who developed PTSD after mTBI (mTBI+PTSD, n=16)-during the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a validated test of empathy requiring emotional appraisal of facial features. Task-related event related potentials (ERPs) were identified, decomposed using independent component analysis (ICA) and localized anatomically using dipole modeling. We observed larger emotional face processing ERPs in veterans with mTBI+PTSD, including greater N300 negativity. Furthermore, greater N300 negativity correlated with greater PTSD severity, especially avoidance/numbing and hyperarousal symptom clusters. This correlation was dependent on contributions from the precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Our results support a model where, in combat veterans with histories of mTBI, larger ERPs from over-active posterior-medial cortical areas may be specific to PTSD, and is likely related to negative self-referential activity. © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.

75 FR 70277 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Form N-400, Extension of a Currently Approved...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-11-17

... Collection Activities: Form N-400, Extension of a Currently Approved Information Collection; Comment Request ACTION: 30-Day Notice of Information Collection Under Review: Form N- 400, Application for Naturalization... Security sponsoring the collection: Form N-400; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). (4...

76 FR 69275 - Agency Information Collection Activities: Form N-400, Extension of a Currently Approved...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-11-08

... Collection Activities: Form N-400, Extension of a Currently Approved Information Collection; Comment Request ACTION: 30-Day Notice of Information Collection Under Review: Form N- 400, Application for Naturalization... sponsoring the collection: Form N-400. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (4) Affected public who...

Validation of the Emotiv EPOC(®) EEG gaming system for measuring research quality auditory ERPs.

PubMed

Badcock, Nicholas A; Mousikou, Petroula; Mahajan, Yatin; de Lissa, Peter; Thie, Johnson; McArthur, Genevieve

2013-01-01

Background. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) have proved useful in investigating the role of auditory processing in cognitive disorders such as developmental dyslexia, specific language impairment (SLI), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, and autism. However, laboratory recordings of auditory ERPs can be lengthy, uncomfortable, or threatening for some participants - particularly children. Recently, a commercial gaming electroencephalography (EEG) system has been developed that is portable, inexpensive, and easy to set up. In this study we tested if auditory ERPs measured using a gaming EEG system (Emotiv EPOC(®), www.emotiv.com) were equivalent to those measured by a widely-used, laboratory-based, research EEG system (Neuroscan). Methods. We simultaneously recorded EEGs with the research and gaming EEG systems, whilst presenting 21 adults with 566 standard (1000 Hz) and 100 deviant (1200 Hz) tones under passive (non-attended) and active (attended) conditions. The onset of each tone was marked in the EEGs using a parallel port pulse (Neuroscan) or a stimulus-generated electrical pulse injected into the O1 and O2 channels (Emotiv EPOC(®)). These markers were used to calculate research and gaming EEG system late auditory ERPs (P1, N1, P2, N2, and P3 peaks) and the mismatch negativity (MMN) in active and passive listening conditions for each participant. Results. Analyses were restricted to frontal sites as these are most commonly reported in auditory ERP research. Intra-class correlations (ICCs) indicated that the morphology of the research and gaming EEG system late auditory ERP waveforms were similar across all participants, but that the research and gaming EEG system MMN waveforms were only similar for participants with non-noisy MMN waveforms (N = 11 out of 21). Peak amplitude and latency measures revealed no significant differences between the size or the timing of the auditory P1, N1, P2, N2, P3, and MMN peaks

The effect of aging on the (mis)perception of intentionality - an ERP study.

PubMed

Pasion, R; Fernandes, C; Gonçalves, A R; Ferreira-Santos, F; Páscoa, R; Barbosa, F; Marques-Teixeira, J

2018-01-23

Despite the accumulated knowledge on moral decision-making in the early stages of development, empirical evidence is still limited in the old-aged adults. The current study contributes to unveil the neural correlates of judgments of moral transgressions as a function of aging, by examining the temporal dynamics of neural activation elicited by intentional and accidental harmful actions in three groups of healthy participants: young adults (18-35), adults (40-55), and older adults (60-75). Older adults were slower and less accurate in rating intentionality, compared to the younger groups. In ERP analysis, the older group showed increased P2 amplitude, which was predicted by poorer performance on neuropsychological tests. Reduced amplitudes were found on critical ERP components to moral cognition (N2 and LPP), namely while processing intentional harmful scenarios. Older adults seem to allocate more attentional resources (P2) to the task, probably to compensate the age-related decline in executive functioning, while younger groups show a pronounced negativity while detecting harm (N2) and increased neural activation to encode the intentions behind the acts (LPP).

The role of semantic and phonological factors in word recognition: an ERP cross-modal priming study of derivational morphology.

PubMed

Kielar, Aneta; Joanisse, Marc F

2011-01-01

Theories of morphological processing differ on the issue of how lexical and grammatical information are stored and accessed. A key point of contention is whether complex forms are decomposed during recognition (e.g., establish+ment), compared to forms that cannot be analyzed into constituent morphemes (e.g., apartment). In the present study, we examined these issues with respect to English derivational morphology by measuring ERP responses during a cross-modal priming lexical decision task. ERP priming effects for semantically and phonologically transparent derived words (government-govern) were compared to those of semantically opaque derived words (apartment-apart) as well as "quasi-regular" items that represent intermediate cases of morphological transparency (dresser-dress). Additional conditions independently manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness in non-derived words (semantics: couch-sofa; phonology: panel-pan). The degree of N400 ERP priming to morphological forms varied depending on the amount of semantic and phonological overlap between word types, rather than respecting a bivariate distinction between derived and opaque forms. Moreover, these effects could not be accounted for by semantic or phonological relatedness alone. The findings support the theory that morphological relatedness is graded rather than absolute, and depend on the joint contribution of form and meaning overlap. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

14 CFR 1267.400 - What are my responsibilities as a(n) NASA awarding official?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... NASA Awarding Officials § 1267.400 What are my responsibilities as a(n) NASA awarding official? As a(n) NASA awarding official, you must obtain each recipient's agreement, as a condition of the award, to... awarding official? 1267.400 Section 1267.400 Aeronautics and Space NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE...

Modality Switching in a Property Verification Task: An ERP Study of What Happens When Candles Flicker after High Heels Click

PubMed Central

Collins, Jennifer; Pecher, Diane; Zeelenberg, René; Coulson, Seana

2011-01-01

The perceptual modalities associated with property words, such as flicker or click, have previously been demonstrated to affect subsequent property verification judgments (Pecher et al., 2003). Known as the conceptual modality switch effect, this finding supports the claim that brain systems for perception and action help subserve the representation of concepts. The present study addressed the cognitive and neural substrate of this effect by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants performed a property verification task with visual or auditory properties in key trials. We found that for visual property verifications, modality switching was associated with an increased amplitude N400. For auditory verifications, switching led to a larger late positive complex. Observed ERP effects of modality switching suggest property words access perceptual brain systems. Moreover, the timing and pattern of the effects suggest perceptual systems impact the decision-making stage in the verification of auditory properties, and the semantic stage in the verification of visual properties. PMID:21713128

Modality Switching in a Property Verification Task: An ERP Study of What Happens When Candles Flicker after High Heels Click.

PubMed

Collins, Jennifer; Pecher, Diane; Zeelenberg, René; Coulson, Seana

2011-01-01

The perceptual modalities associated with property words, such as flicker or click, have previously been demonstrated to affect subsequent property verification judgments (Pecher et al., 2003). Known as the conceptual modality switch effect, this finding supports the claim that brain systems for perception and action help subserve the representation of concepts. The present study addressed the cognitive and neural substrate of this effect by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants performed a property verification task with visual or auditory properties in key trials. We found that for visual property verifications, modality switching was associated with an increased amplitude N400. For auditory verifications, switching led to a larger late positive complex. Observed ERP effects of modality switching suggest property words access perceptual brain systems. Moreover, the timing and pattern of the effects suggest perceptual systems impact the decision-making stage in the verification of auditory properties, and the semantic stage in the verification of visual properties.

[Electrophysiological bases of semantic processing of objects].

PubMed

Kahlaoui, Karima; Baccino, Thierry; Joanette, Yves; Magnié, Marie-Noële

2007-02-01

How pictures and words are stored and processed in the human brain constitute a long-standing question in cognitive psychology. Behavioral studies have yielded a large amount of data addressing this issue. Generally speaking, these data show that there are some interactions between the semantic processing of pictures and words. However, behavioral methods can provide only limited insight into certain findings. Fortunately, Event-Related Potential (ERP) provides on-line cues about the temporal nature of cognitive processes and contributes to the exploration of their neural substrates. ERPs have been used in order to better understand semantic processing of words and pictures. The main objective of this article is to offer an overview of the electrophysiologic bases of semantic processing of words and pictures. Studies presented in this article showed that the processing of words is associated with an N 400 component, whereas pictures elicited both N 300 and N 400 components. Topographical analysis of the N 400 distribution over the scalp is compatible with the idea that both image-mediated concrete words and pictures access an amodal semantic system. However, given the distinctive N 300 patterns, observed only during picture processing, it appears that picture and word processing rely upon distinct neuronal networks, even if they end up activating more or less similar semantic representations.

Attentional Bias to Negative Emotion as a Function of Approach and Withdrawal Anger Styles: An ERP Investigation

PubMed Central

Stewart, Jennifer L.; Silton, Rebecca Levin; Sass, Sarah M.; Fisher, Joscelyn E.; Edgar, J. Christopher; Heller, Wendy; Miller, Gregory A.

2010-01-01

Although models of emotion have focused on the relationship between anger and approach motivation associated with aggression, anger is also related to withdrawal motivation. Anger-out and anger-in styles are associated with psychopathology and may disrupt the control of attention within the context of negatively valenced information. The present study used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to examine whether anger styles uniquely predict attentional bias to negative stimuli during an emotion-word Stroop task. High anger-out predicted larger N200, P300, and N400 to negative words, suggesting that aggressive individuals exert more effort to override attention to negative information. In contrast, high anger-in predicted smaller N400 amplitude to negative words, indicating that negative information may be readily available (primed) for anger suppressors, requiring fewer resources. Individuals with an anger-out style might benefit from being directed away from provocative stimuli that might otherwise consume their attention and foster overt aggression. Findings indicating that anger-out and anger-in were associated with divergent patterns of brain activity provide support for distinguishing approach- and withdrawal-related anger styles. PMID:20109502

Making sense of all the conflict: a theoretical review and critique of conflict-related ERPs.

PubMed

Larson, Michael J; Clayson, Peter E; Clawson, Ann

2014-09-01

Cognitive control theory suggests that goal-directed behavior is governed by a dynamic interplay between areas of the prefrontal cortex. Critical to cognitive control is the detection and resolution of competing stimulus or response representations (i.e., conflict). Event-related potential (ERP) research provides a window into the nature and precise temporal sequence of conflict monitoring. We critically review the research on conflict-related ERPs, including the error-related negativity (ERN), Flanker N2, Stroop N450 and conflict slow potential (conflict SP or negative slow wave [NSW]), and provide an analysis of how these ERPs inform conflict monitoring theory. Overall, there is considerable evidence that amplitude of the ERN is sensitive to the degree of response conflict, consistent with a role in conflict monitoring. It remains unclear, however, to what degree contextual, individual, affective, and motivational factors influence ERN amplitudes and how ERN amplitudes are related to regulative changes in behavior. The Flanker N2, Stroop N450, and conflict SP ERPs represent distinct conflict-monitoring processes that reflect conflict detection (N2, N450) and conflict adjustment or resolution processes (N2, conflict SP). The investigation of conflict adaptation effects (i.e., sequence or sequential trial effects) shows that the N2 and conflict SP reflect post-conflict adjustments in cognitive control, but the N450 generally does not. Conflict-related ERP research provides a promising avenue for understanding the effects of individual differences on cognitive control processes in healthy, neurologic and psychiatric populations. Comparisons between the major conflict-related ERPs and suggestions for future studies to clarify the nature of conflict-related neural processes are provided. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Earthquake experience interference effects in a modified Stroop task: an ERP study.

PubMed

Wei, Dongtao; Qiu, Jiang; Tu, Shen; Tian, Fang; Su, Yanhua; Luo, Yuejia

2010-05-03

The effects of the modified Stroop task on ERP were investigated in 20 subjects who had experienced the Sichuan earthquake and a matched control group. ERP data showed that Incongruent stimuli elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N300-450) than did Congruent stimuli between 300 and 450 ms post-stimulus in the earthquake group but not found in the control group, and the N300-450 might reflect conflict monitor (the information of color and meaning do not match) in the early phase of perception identification due to their sensitivity to the external stimulus. Then, Incongruent stimuli elicited a more negative ERP deflection than did Congruent stimuli between 450 and 650 ms post-stimulus in both the groups. Dipole source analysis showed that the N450-650 was mainly generated in the ACC contributed to this effect in the control group, which might be related to monitor and conflict resolution. However, in the earthquake group, the N450-650 was generated in the thalamus, which might be involved in inhibiting and compensating of the ACC which may be related to conflict resolution process. 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Processing temporal agreement in a tenseless language: an ERP study of Mandarin Chinese.

PubMed

Qiu, Yinchen; Zhou, Xiaolin

2012-03-29

Human languages are equipped with an impressive repertoire of time-encoding devices which vary significantly across different cultures. Previous research on temporal processing has focused on morphosyntactic processes in Indo-European languages. This study investigated the neural correlates of temporal processing in Mandarin Chinese, a language that is not morphologically marked for tense. In a sentence acceptability judgment task, we manipulated the agreement between semantically enriched temporal adverbs or a highly grammaticalized aspectual particle (-guo) and temporal noun phrases. Disagreement of both the temporal adverbs and the aspectual particle elicited a centro-parietal P600 effect in event-related potentials (ERPs) whereas only disagreeing temporal adverbs evoked an additional broadly distributed N400 effect. Moreover, a sustained negativity effect was observed on both the words following the critical ones and the last words in sentences with temporal disagreement. These results reveal both commonalities and differences between Chinese and Indo-European languages in temporal agreement processing. In particular, we demonstrate that temporal reference in Chinese relies on both lexical semantics and morphosyntactic processes and that the level of grammaticalization of linguistic devices representing similar temporal information is reflected in differential ERP responses. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The interoperability force in the ERP field

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boza, Andrés; Cuenca, Llanos; Poler, Raúl; Michaelides, Zenon

2015-04-01

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems participate in interoperability projects and this participation sometimes leads to new proposals for the ERP field. The aim of this paper is to identify the role that interoperability plays in the evolution of ERP systems. To go about this, ERP systems have been first identified within interoperability frameworks. Second, the initiatives in the ERP field driven by interoperability requirements have been identified from two perspectives: technological and business. The ERP field is evolving from classical ERP as information system integrators to a new generation of fully interoperable ERP. Interoperability is changing the way of running business, and ERP systems are changing to adapt to the current stream of interoperability.

Event-related potentials show taste and risk effects on food evaluation.

PubMed

Ma, Qingguo; Wang, Cuicui; Wu, Yifan; Wang, Xiaoyi

2014-07-09

Tastes and claims about unhealthy food are important factors that affect consumption. This study investigated the correlation of the event-related potential (ERP) of the evaluation of processing of food information with the task of positive judgment. Given the information on possible diseases that arise with food consumption, sweet-tasting food elicited more conflict than salty food, and this conflict was reflected by a negative ERP component at 250-500 ms (N400). Moreover, the late positive wave at 500-800 ms that was evoked by presentation of food with the names of chronic diseases that could arise from the consumption of such food was larger than that evoked when acute diseases were presented. Sweet-tasting food caused a more intense conflict with disease-related risk than salty food, and chronic diseases aroused a stronger emotional fear than acute diseases. These findings provide new insights into the N400 component and the neurocognitive processes of evaluating food combined with taste and risk information.

'Faceness' and affectivity: evidence for genetic contributions to distinct components of electrocortical response to human faces.

PubMed

Shannon, Robert W; Patrick, Christopher J; Venables, Noah C; He, Sheng

2013-12-01

The ability to recognize a variety of different human faces is undoubtedly one of the most important and impressive functions of the human perceptual system. Neuroimaging studies have revealed multiple brain regions (including the FFA, STS, OFA) and electrophysiological studies have identified differing brain event-related potential (ERP) components (e.g., N170, P200) possibly related to distinct types of face information processing. To evaluate the heritability of ERP components associated with face processing, including N170, P200, and LPP, we examined ERP responses to fearful and neutral face stimuli in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. Concordance levels for early brain response indices of face processing (N170, P200) were found to be stronger for MZ than DZ twins, providing evidence of a heritable basis to each. These findings support the idea that certain key neural mechanisms for face processing are genetically coded. Implications for understanding individual differences in recognition of facial identity and the emotional content of faces are discussed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lonely Individuals Do Not Show Interpersonal Self-Positivity Bias: Evidence From N400

PubMed Central

Zhu, Min; Zhu, Changzheng; Gao, Xiangping; Luo, Junlong

2018-01-01

Self-positivity bias is one of the well-studied psychological phenomena, however, little is known about the bias in the specific dimension on social interaction, which we called herein interpersonal self-positivity bias—people tend to evaluate themselves more positively on social interactions, prefer to be included rather than to be excluded by others. In the present study, we used a modified self-reference task associated with N400 to verify such bias and explore whether impoverished social interaction (loneliness) could modulate it. Findings showed that exclusion verbs elicited larger N400 amplitudes than inclusion verbs, suggesting that most people have interpersonal self-positivity bias. However, loneliness was significantly correlated with N400 effect, showing those with high scores of loneliness had smaller differences in the N400 than those with lower scores. These findings indicated impoverished social interaction weakens interpersonal self-positivity bias; however, the underlying mechanisms need to be explored in future research. PMID:29681875

The influence of caffeine on sustained attention: an ERP study.

PubMed

Ruijter, J; Lorist, M M; Snel, J; De Ruiter, M B

2000-05-01

The present study investigated the effects of caffeine on sustained attention by measuring concentration and fatigue. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures were recorded from 12 participants who worked continuously for approximately 10 min in a self-paced reaction task under conditions of both caffeine (250 mg) and placebo. The ERP data revealed more positive frontal P2 and parietal P3 components in the caffeine condition. However, a combination of different indices of the behavioral data did not reveal any effects of caffeine intake. These results suggest that caffeine increases arousal, thereby reducing fatigue, as was observed in the ERP results. A probable explanation for the absence of any effects of caffeine in the behavioral data can be found in the demanding properties of the task that was used, thereby supporting evidence for more pronounced effects of caffeine in suboptimal conditions. In addition, these results appeal for an increase in the use of ERPs in drug research, in order to discover possible effects on the brain which do not necessarily result in behavioral changes.

Gaze-independent ERP-BCIs: augmenting performance through location-congruent bimodal stimuli

PubMed Central

Thurlings, Marieke E.; Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Van Erp, Jan B. F.; Werkhoven, Peter

2014-01-01

Gaze-independent event-related potential (ERP) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) yield relatively low BCI performance and traditionally employ unimodal stimuli. Bimodal ERP-BCIs may increase BCI performance due to multisensory integration or summation in the brain. An additional advantage of bimodal BCIs may be that the user can choose which modality or modalities to attend to. We studied bimodal, visual-tactile, gaze-independent BCIs and investigated whether or not ERP components’ tAUCs and subsequent classification accuracies are increased for (1) bimodal vs. unimodal stimuli; (2) location-congruent vs. location-incongruent bimodal stimuli; and (3) attending to both modalities vs. to either one modality. We observed an enhanced bimodal (compared to unimodal) P300 tAUC, which appeared to be positively affected by location-congruency (p = 0.056) and resulted in higher classification accuracies. Attending either to one or to both modalities of the bimodal location-congruent stimuli resulted in differences between ERP components, but not in classification performance. We conclude that location-congruent bimodal stimuli improve ERP-BCIs, and offer the user the possibility to switch the attended modality without losing performance. PMID:25249947

Effects of facial attractiveness on personality stimuli in an implicit priming task: an ERP study.

PubMed

Zhang, Yan; Zheng, Minxiao; Wang, Xiaoying

2016-08-01

Using event-related potentials (ERPs) in a priming paradigm, this study examines implicit priming in the association of personality words with facial attractiveness. A total of 16 participants (8 males and 8 females; age range, 19-24 years; mean age, 21.30 years) were asked to judge the color (red and green) of positive or negative personality words after exposure to priming stimuli (attractive and unattractive facial images). The positive personality words primed by attractive faces or the negative personality words primed by unattractive faces were defined as congruent trials, whereas the positive personality words primed by unattractive faces or the negative personality words primed by attractive faces were defined as incongruent trials. Behavioral results showed that compared with the unattractive faces trials, the trials that attractive faces being the priming stimuli had longer reaction times and higher accuracy rates. Moreover, a more negative ERP deflection (N2) component was observed in the ERPs of the incongruent condition than in the ERPs of the congruent condition. In addition, the personality words presented after the attractive faces elicited larger amplitudes from the frontal region to the central region (P2 and P350-550 ms) compared with the personality words after unattractive faces as priming stimuli. The study provides evidence for the facial attractiveness stereotype ('What is beautiful is good') through an implicit priming task.

Cardiovascular fitness and executive control during task-switching: an ERP study.

PubMed

Scisco, Jenna L; Leynes, P Andrew; Kang, Jie

2008-07-01

Cardiovascular fitness recently has been linked to executive control function in older adults. The present study examined the relationship between cardiovascular fitness and executive control in young adults using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants completed a two-part experiment. In part one, a graded exercise test (GXT) was administered using a cycle ergometer to obtain VO(2)max, a measure of maximal oxygen uptake. High-fit participants had VO(2)max measures at or above the 70th percentile based on age and sex, and low-fit participants had VO(2)max measures at or below the 30th percentile. In part two, a task-switching paradigm was used to investigate executive control. Task-switching trials produced slower response times and greater amplitude for both the P3a and P3b components of the ERP relative to a non-switch trial block. No ERP components varied as a function of fitness group. These findings, combined with results from previous research, suggest that the relationship between greater cardiovascular fitness and better cognitive function emerges after early adulthood.

A novel EOG/EEG hybrid human-machine interface adopting eye movements and ERPs: application to robot control.

PubMed

Ma, Jiaxin; Zhang, Yu; Cichocki, Andrzej; Matsuno, Fumitoshi

2015-03-01

This study presents a novel human-machine interface (HMI) based on both electrooculography (EOG) and electroencephalography (EEG). This hybrid interface works in two modes: an EOG mode recognizes eye movements such as blinks, and an EEG mode detects event related potentials (ERPs) like P300. While both eye movements and ERPs have been separately used for implementing assistive interfaces, which help patients with motor disabilities in performing daily tasks, the proposed hybrid interface integrates them together. In this way, both the eye movements and ERPs complement each other. Therefore, it can provide a better efficiency and a wider scope of application. In this study, we design a threshold algorithm that can recognize four kinds of eye movements including blink, wink, gaze, and frown. In addition, an oddball paradigm with stimuli of inverted faces is used to evoke multiple ERP components including P300, N170, and VPP. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed system, two different online experiments are carried out. One is to control a multifunctional humanoid robot, and the other is to control four mobile robots. In both experiments, the subjects can complete tasks effectively by using the proposed interface, whereas the best completion time is relatively short and very close to the one operated by hand.

Gesture and Metaphor Comprehension: Electrophysiological Evidence of Cross-Modal Coordination by Audiovisual Stimulation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cornejo, Carlos; Simonetti, Franco; Ibanez, Agustin; Aldunate, Nerea; Ceric, Francisco; Lopez, Vladimir; Nunez, Rafael E.

2009-01-01

In recent years, studies have suggested that gestures influence comprehension of linguistic expressions, for example, eliciting an N400 component in response to a speech/gesture mismatch. In this paper, we investigate the role of gestural information in the understanding of metaphors. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while…

Behavioral and ERP evidence of word and pseudoword superiority effects in 7- and 11-year-olds

PubMed Central

Coch, Donna; Mitra, Priya; George, Elyse

2012-01-01

In groups of 7-year-olds and 11-year-olds, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to briefly presented, masked letter strings that included real word (DARK/PARK), pronounceable pseudoword (DARL/PARL), unpronounceable nonword (RDKA/RPKA), and letter-in-xs (DXXX, PXXX) stimuli in a variant of the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm. Behaviorally, participants decided which of two letters occurred at a given position in each string (here, forced-choice alternatives D and P). Both groups showed evidence of behavioral word (more accurate choices for letters in words than in baseline nonwords or letter-in-xs) and pseudoword (more accurate choices for letters in pseudowords than in baseline nonwords or letter-in-xs) superiority effects. Electrophysiologically, 11-year-olds evidenced superiority effects on P150 and N400 peak amplitude, while 7-year-olds showed effects only on N400 amplitude. These findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying the observed behavioral superiority effects may be lexical in younger children but both sublexical and lexical in older children. These results are consistent with a lengthy developmental time course for automatic sublexical orthographic specialization, extending beyond the age of 11. PMID:23036274

ERp57 interacts with conserved cysteine residues in the MHC class I peptide-binding groove.

PubMed

Antoniou, Antony N; Santos, Susana G; Campbell, Elaine C; Lynch, Sarah; Arosa, Fernando A; Powis, Simon J

2007-05-15

The oxidoreductase ERp57 is a component of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I peptide-loading complex. ERp57 can interact directly with MHC class I molecules, however, little is known about which of the cysteine residues within the MHC class I molecule are relevant to this interaction. MHC class I molecules possess conserved disulfide bonds between cysteines 101-164, and 203-259 in the peptide-binding and alpha3 domain, respectively. By studying a series of mutants of these conserved residues, we demonstrate that ERp57 predominantly associates with cysteine residues in the peptide-binding domain, thus indicating ERp57 has direct access to the peptide-binding groove of MHC class I molecules during assembly.

Reactive recruitment of attentional control in math anxiety: an ERP study of numeric conflict monitoring and adaptation.

PubMed

Suárez-Pellicioni, Macarena; Núñez-Peña, María Isabel; Colomé, Àngels

2014-01-01

This study uses event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of numeric conflict monitoring in math-anxious individuals, by analyzing whether math anxiety is related to abnormal processing in early conflict detection (as shown by the N450 component) and/or in a later, response-related stage of processing (as shown by the conflict sustained potential; Conflict-SP). Conflict adaptation effects were also studied by analyzing the effect of the previous trial's congruence in current interference. To this end, 17 low math-anxious (LMA) and 17 high math-anxious (HMA) individuals were presented with a numerical Stroop task. Groups were extreme in math anxiety but did not differ in trait or state anxiety or in simple math ability. The interference effect of the current trial (incongruent-congruent) and the interference effect preceded by congruence and by incongruity were analyzed both for behavioral measures and for ERPs. A greater interference effect was found for response times in the HMA group than in the LMA one. Regarding ERPs, the LMA group showed a greater N450 component for the interference effect preceded by congruence than when preceded by incongruity, while the HMA group showed greater Conflict-SP amplitude for the interference effect preceded by congruence than when preceded by incongruity. Our study showed that the electrophysiological correlates of numeric interference in HMA individuals comprise the absence of a conflict adaptation effect in the first stage of conflict processing (N450) and an abnormal subsequent up-regulation of cognitive control in order to overcome the conflict (Conflict-SP). More concretely, our study shows that math anxiety is related to a reactive and compensatory recruitment of control resources that is implemented only when previously exposed to a stimuli presenting conflicting information.

Reactive Recruitment of Attentional Control in Math Anxiety: An ERP Study of Numeric Conflict Monitoring and Adaptation

PubMed Central

Suárez-Pellicioni, Macarena; Núñez-Peña, María Isabel; Colomé, Àngels

2014-01-01

This study uses event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of numeric conflict monitoring in math-anxious individuals, by analyzing whether math anxiety is related to abnormal processing in early conflict detection (as shown by the N450 component) and/or in a later, response-related stage of processing (as shown by the conflict sustained potential; Conflict-SP). Conflict adaptation effects were also studied by analyzing the effect of the previous trial’s congruence in current interference. To this end, 17 low math-anxious (LMA) and 17 high math-anxious (HMA) individuals were presented with a numerical Stroop task. Groups were extreme in math anxiety but did not differ in trait or state anxiety or in simple math ability. The interference effect of the current trial (incongruent-congruent) and the interference effect preceded by congruence and by incongruity were analyzed both for behavioral measures and for ERPs. A greater interference effect was found for response times in the HMA group than in the LMA one. Regarding ERPs, the LMA group showed a greater N450 component for the interference effect preceded by congruence than when preceded by incongruity, while the HMA group showed greater Conflict-SP amplitude for the interference effect preceded by congruence than when preceded by incongruity. Our study showed that the electrophysiological correlates of numeric interference in HMA individuals comprise the absence of a conflict adaptation effect in the first stage of conflict processing (N450) and an abnormal subsequent up-regulation of cognitive control in order to overcome the conflict (Conflict-SP). More concretely, our study shows that math anxiety is related to a reactive and compensatory recruitment of control resources that is implemented only when previously exposed to a stimuli presenting conflicting information. PMID:24918584

P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI) event-related potentials (ERPs): People with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) vs. age-matched controls.

PubMed

McCane, Lynn M; Heckman, Susan M; McFarland, Dennis J; Townsend, George; Mak, Joseph N; Sellers, Eric W; Zeitlin, Debra; Tenteromano, Laura M; Wolpaw, Jonathan R; Vaughan, Theresa M

2015-11-01

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) aimed at restoring communication to people with severe neuromuscular disabilities often use event-related potentials (ERPs) in scalp-recorded EEG activity. Up to the present, most research and development in this area has been done in the laboratory with young healthy control subjects. In order to facilitate the development of BCI most useful to people with disabilities, the present study set out to: (1) determine whether people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and healthy, age-matched volunteers (HVs) differ in the speed and accuracy of their ERP-based BCI use; (2) compare the ERP characteristics of these two groups; and (3) identify ERP-related factors that might enable improvement in BCI performance for people with disabilities. Sixteen EEG channels were recorded while people with ALS or healthy age-matched volunteers (HVs) used a P300-based BCI. The subjects with ALS had little or no remaining useful motor control (mean ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised 9.4 (±9.5SD) (range 0-25)). Each subject attended to a target item as the items in a 6×6 visual matrix flashed. The BCI used a stepwise linear discriminant function (SWLDA) to determine the item the user wished to select (i.e., the target item). Offline analyses assessed the latencies, amplitudes, and locations of ERPs to the target and non-target items for people with ALS and age-matched control subjects. BCI accuracy and communication rate did not differ significantly between ALS users and HVs. Although ERP morphology was similar for the two groups, their target ERPs differed significantly in the location and amplitude of the late positivity (P300), the amplitude of the early negativity (N200), and the latency of the late negativity (LN). The differences in target ERP components between people with ALS and age-matched HVs are consistent with the growing recognition that ALS may affect cortical function. The development of BCIs for use by this population may begin

Confusing similar words: ERP correlates of lexical-semantic processing in first language attrition and late second language acquisition.

PubMed

Kasparian, Kristina; Steinhauer, Karsten

2016-12-01

First language (L1) attrition is a socio-linguistic circumstance where second language (L2) learning coincides with changes in exposure and use of the native-L1. Attriters often report experiencing a decline in automaticity or proficiency in their L1 after a prolonged period in the L2 environment, while their L2 proficiency continues to strengthen. Investigating the neurocognitive correlates of attrition alongside those of late L2 acquisition addresses the question of whether the brain mechanisms underlying both L1 and L2 processing are strongly determined by proficiency, irrespective of whether the language was acquired from birth or in adulthood. Using event-related-potentials (ERPs), we examined lexical-semantic processing in Italian L1 attriters, compared to adult Italian L2 learners and to Italian monolingual native speakers. We contrasted the processing of classical lexical-semantic violations (Mismatch condition) with sentences that were equally semantically implausible but arguably trickier, as the target-noun was "swapped" with an orthographic neighbor that differed only in its final vowel and gender-marking morpheme (e.g., cappello (hat) vs. cappella (chapel)). Our aim was to determine whether sentences with such "confusable nouns" (Swap condition) would be processed as semantically correct by late L2 learners and L1 attriters, especially for those individuals with lower Italian proficiency scores. We found that lower-proficiency Italian speakers did not show significant N400 effects for Swap violations relative to correct sentences, regardless of whether Italian was the L1 or the L2. Crucially, N400 response profiles followed a continuum of "nativelikeness" predicted by Italian proficiency scores - high-proficiency attriters and high-proficiency Italian learners were indistinguishable from native controls, whereas attriters and L2 learners in the lower-proficiency range showed significantly reduced N400 effects for "Swap" errors. Importantly, attriters

Neural Dynamics of Audiovisual Synchrony and Asynchrony Perception in 6-Month-Old Infants

PubMed Central

Kopp, Franziska; Dietrich, Claudia

2013-01-01

Young infants are sensitive to multisensory temporal synchrony relations, but the neural dynamics of temporal interactions between vision and audition in infancy are not well understood. We investigated audiovisual synchrony and asynchrony perception in 6-month-old infants using event-related brain potentials (ERP). In a prior behavioral experiment (n = 45), infants were habituated to an audiovisual synchronous stimulus and tested for recovery of interest by presenting an asynchronous test stimulus in which the visual stream was delayed with respect to the auditory stream by 400 ms. Infants who behaviorally discriminated the change in temporal alignment were included in further analyses. In the EEG experiment (final sample: n = 15), synchronous and asynchronous stimuli (visual delay of 400 ms) were presented in random order. Results show latency shifts in the auditory ERP components N1 and P2 as well as the infant ERP component Nc. Latencies in the asynchronous condition were significantly longer than in the synchronous condition. After video onset but preceding the auditory onset, amplitude modulations propagating from posterior to anterior sites and related to the Pb component of infants’ ERP were observed. Results suggest temporal interactions between the two modalities. Specifically, they point to the significance of anticipatory visual motion for auditory processing, and indicate young infants’ predictive capacities for audiovisual temporal synchrony relations. PMID:23346071

Memory timeline: Brain ERP C250 (not P300) is an early biomarker of short-term storage.

PubMed

Chapman, Robert M; Gardner, Margaret N; Mapstone, Mark; Dupree, Haley M; Antonsdottir, Inga M

2015-04-16

Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) offer a quantitative link between neurophysiological activity and cognitive performance. ERPs were measured while young adults performed a task that required storing a relevant stimulus in short-term memory. Using principal components analysis, ERP component C250 (maximum at 250 ms post-stimulus) was extracted from a set of ERPs that were separately averaged for various task conditions, including stimulus relevancy and stimulus sequence within a trial. C250 was more positive in response to task-specific stimuli that were successfully stored in short-term memory. This relationship between C250 and short-term memory storage of a stimulus was confirmed by a memory probe recall test where the behavioral recall of a stimulus was highly correlated with its C250 amplitude. ERP component P300 (and its subcomponents of P3a and P3b, which are commonly thought to represent memory operations) did not show a pattern of activation reflective of storing task-relevant stimuli. C250 precedes the P300, indicating that initial short-term memory storage may occur earlier than previously believed. Additionally, because C250 is so strongly predictive of a stimulus being stored in short-term memory, C250 may provide a strong index of early memory operations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Acquiring research-grade ERPs on a shoestring budget: A comparison of a modified Emotiv and commercial SynAmps EEG system.

PubMed

Barham, Michael P; Clark, Gillian M; Hayden, Melissa J; Enticott, Peter G; Conduit, Russell; Lum, Jarrad A G

2017-09-01

This study compared the performance of a low-cost wireless EEG system to a research-grade EEG system on an auditory oddball task designed to elicit N200 and P300 ERP components. Participants were 15 healthy adults (6 female) aged between 19 and 40 (M = 28.56; SD = 6.38). An auditory oddball task was presented comprising 1,200 presentations of a standard tone interspersed by 300 trials comprising a deviant tone. EEG was simultaneously recorded from a modified Emotiv EPOC and a NeuroScan SynAmps RT EEG system. The modifications made to the Emotiv system included attaching research grade electrodes to the Bluetooth transmitter. Additional modifications enabled the Emotiv system to connect to a portable impedance meter. The cost of these modifications and portable impedance meter approached the purchase value of the Emotiv system. Preliminary analyses revealed significantly more trials were rejected from data acquired by the modified Emotiv compared to the SynAmps system. However, the ERP waveforms captured by the Emotiv system were found to be highly similar to the corresponding waveform from the SynAmps system. The latency and peak amplitude of N200 and P300 components were also found to be similar between systems. Overall, the results indicate that, in the context of an oddball task, the ERP acquired by a low-cost wireless EEG system can be of comparable quality to research-grade EEG acquisition equipment. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Won't Get Fooled Again: An Event-Related Potential Study of Task and Repetition Effects on the Semantic Processing of Items without Semantics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Laszlo, Sarah; Stites, Mallory; Federmeier, Kara D.

2012-01-01

A growing body of evidence suggests that semantic access is obligatory. Several studies have demonstrated that brain activity associated with semantic processing, measured in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), is elicited even by meaningless, orthographically illegal strings, suggesting that semantic access is not gated…

The Neural Correlates of Processing Newborn and Adult Faces in 3-Year-Old Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peykarjou, Stefanie; Westerlund, Alissa; Cassia, Viola Macchi; Kuefner, Dana; Nelson, Charles A.

2013-01-01

The current study examines the processing of upright and inverted faces in 3-year-old children (n = 35). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a passive looking paradigm including adult and newborn face stimuli. We observed three face-sensitive components, the P1, the N170 and the P400. Inverted faces elicited shorter P1 latency and…

The temporal dynamics of masked repetition picture priming effects: manipulations of stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and prime duration

PubMed Central

Eddy, Marianna D.; Holcomb, Phillip J.

2010-01-01

The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) and masked repetition priming to examine the time-course of picture processing. We manipulated the stimulus-onset asynchrony (110 ms, 230 ms, 350 ms, 470 ms) between repeated and unrepeated prime-target pairs while holding the prime duration constant (50 ms) (Experiment 1) as well as the prime duration (30 ms, 50 ms, 70 ms, 90 ms) (Experiment 2) with a constant SOA of 110 ms in a masked repetition priming paradigm with pictures. The aim of this study was to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying previously observed ERP components in masked priming with pictures. We found both the N/P190 and N400 are modulated by changes in prime duration and SOA, however, it appears that longer prime exposure rather than a longer SOA leads to more in-depth processing as indexed by larger N400 effects. PMID:20403342

Development of Action Monitoring through Adolescence into Adulthood: ERP and Source Localization

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ladouceur, Cecile D.; Dahl, Ronald E.; Carter, Cameron S.

2007-01-01

In this study we examined the development of three action monitoring event-related potentials (ERPs)--the error-related negativity (ERN/Ne), error positivity (P[subscript E]) and the N2--and estimated their neural sources. These ERPs were recorded during a flanker task in the following groups: early adolescents (mean age = 12 years), late…

Neural Responses to Partner Rejection Cues

PubMed Central

Zayas, Vivian; Shoda, Yuichi; Mischel, Walter; Osterhout, Lee; Takahashi, Melissa

2009-01-01

Little is known about neural responses in the early automatic-stage processing of rejection cues from a partner. Event-related potentials (ERPs) offer a window to study processes that may be difficult to detect via behavioral methods. We focused on the N400 ERP component, which reflects the amount of semantic processing prompted by a target. When participants were primed by attachment-related contexts (“If I need help from my partner, my partner will be …”), rejection-related words (e.g., dismissing) elicited greater N400 amplitudes than acceptance-related words (e.g., supporting). Analyses of results for nonattachment primes suggest that these findings were not simply caused by target valence; the brain responds differentially to cues of partner rejection versus acceptance in under 300 ms. Moreover, these early-stage neurophysiological responses were heightened or dampened as a function of individuals’ adult attachment; women characterized by high anxiety and low avoidance showed the greatest N400 responses to cues of partner rejection (vs. acceptance). PMID:19493321

Early visual ERPs are influenced by individual emotional skills.

PubMed

Meaux, Emilie; Roux, Sylvie; Batty, Magali

2014-08-01

Processing information from faces is crucial to understanding others and to adapting to social life. Many studies have investigated responses to facial emotions to provide a better understanding of the processes and the neural networks involved. Moreover, several studies have revealed abnormalities of emotional face processing and their neural correlates in affective disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate whether early visual event-related potentials (ERPs) are affected by the emotional skills of healthy adults. Unfamiliar faces expressing the six basic emotions were presented to 28 young adults while recording visual ERPs. No specific task was required during the recording. Participants also completed the Social Skills Inventory (SSI) which measures social and emotional skills. The results confirmed that early visual ERPs (P1, N170) are affected by the emotions expressed by a face and also demonstrated that N170 and P2 are correlated to the emotional skills of healthy subjects. While N170 is sensitive to the subject's emotional sensitivity and expressivity, P2 is modulated by the ability of the subjects to control their emotions. We therefore suggest that N170 and P2 could be used as individual markers to assess strengths and weaknesses in emotional areas and could provide information for further investigations of affective disorders. © The Author (2013). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Early visual ERPs are influenced by individual emotional skills

PubMed Central

Roux, Sylvie; Batty, Magali

2014-01-01

Processing information from faces is crucial to understanding others and to adapting to social life. Many studies have investigated responses to facial emotions to provide a better understanding of the processes and the neural networks involved. Moreover, several studies have revealed abnormalities of emotional face processing and their neural correlates in affective disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate whether early visual event-related potentials (ERPs) are affected by the emotional skills of healthy adults. Unfamiliar faces expressing the six basic emotions were presented to 28 young adults while recording visual ERPs. No specific task was required during the recording. Participants also completed the Social Skills Inventory (SSI) which measures social and emotional skills. The results confirmed that early visual ERPs (P1, N170) are affected by the emotions expressed by a face and also demonstrated that N170 and P2 are correlated to the emotional skills of healthy subjects. While N170 is sensitive to the subject’s emotional sensitivity and expressivity, P2 is modulated by the ability of the subjects to control their emotions. We therefore suggest that N170 and P2 could be used as individual markers to assess strengths and weaknesses in emotional areas and could provide information for further investigations of affective disorders. PMID:23720573

The Challenge of Implementing an ERP System in a Small and Medium Enterprise--A Teaching Case of ERP Project Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Hongjiang; Rondeau, Patrick J.; Mahenthiran, Sakthi

2011-01-01

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation projects are notoriously risky. While large-scale ERP cases continue to be developed, relatively few new ERP cases have been published that further ERP implementation education in small to medium size firms. This case details the implementation of a new ERP system in a medium sized…

The more you ignore me the closer I get: An ERP study of evaluative priming.

PubMed

Gibbons, Henning; Bachmann, Olga; Stahl, Jutta

2014-12-01

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the various mental processes contributing to evaluative priming-that is, more positive judgments for targets preceded by affectively positive, as opposed to negative, prime stimuli. To ensure ecological validity, we employed a priori meaningful landscape pictures as targets and emotional adjectives as visual primes and presented both primes and targets for relatively long durations (>1 s). Prime-related lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) revealed response priming as one source of the significant evaluative priming effect. On the other hand, greater right-frontal positive slow wave in the ERP for pictures following negative, as compared with positive, primes indicated altered impression formation, thus supporting automatic spreading activation and/or affect misattribution accounts. Moreover, target LRPs suggested conscious counter-control to reduce the evaluative priming net effect. Finally, when comparing prime ERPs for two groups of participants showing strong versus weak evaluative priming, we found strong evidence for the role of depth of prime processing: In the weak-effect group, prime words evoked an increased visual P1/N1 complex, a larger posterior P2 component, and a greater left-parietal processing negativity presumably reflecting semantic processing. By contrast, a larger medial-frontal P2/N2 complex in the strong-effect group suggested top-down inhibition of the prime's emotional content. Thus, trying to ignore the primes can actually increase, rather than decrease, the evaluative priming effect.

The ERP correlates of self-knowledge: Are assessments of one's past, present, and future traits closer to semantic or episodic memory?

PubMed

Tanguay, Annick N; Benton, Lauren; Romio, Lorenza; Sievers, Carolin; Davidson, Patrick S R; Renoult, Louis

2018-02-01

Self-knowledge concerns one's own preferences and personality. It pertains to the self (similar to episodic memory), yet does not concern events. It is factual (like semantic memory), but also idiosyncratic. For these reasons, it is unclear where self-knowledge might fall on a continuum in relation to semantic and episodic memory. In this study, we aimed to compare the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of self-knowledge to those of semantic and episodic memory, using N400 and Late Positive Component (LPC) as proxies for semantic and episodic processing, respectively. We considered an additional factor: time perspective. Temporally distant selves have been suggested to be more semantic compared to the present self, but thinking about one's past and future selves may also engage episodic memory. Twenty-eight adults answered whether traits (e.g., persistent) were true of most people holding an occupation (e.g., soldiers; semantic memory condition), or true of themselves 5 years ago, in the present, or 5 years from now (past, present, and future self-knowledge conditions). The study ended with an episodic recognition memory task for previously seen traits. Present self-knowledge produced mean LPC amplitudes at posterior parietal sites that fell between semantic and episodic memory. Mean LPC amplitudes for past and future self-knowledge were greater than for semantic memory, and not significantly different from episodic memory. Mean N400 amplitudes for the self-knowledge conditions were smaller than for semantic memory at sagittal sites. However, this N400 effect was not separable from a preceding P200 effect at these same electrode sites. This P200 effect can be interpreted as reflecting the greater emotional salience of self as compared to general knowledge, which may have facilitated semantic processing. Overall, our findings are consistent with a distinction between knowledge of others and self-knowledge, but the closeness of self-knowledge's neural

ERP signatures of conscious and unconscious word and letter perception in an inattentional blindness paradigm.

PubMed

Schelonka, Kathryn; Graulty, Christian; Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta; Pitts, Michael A

2017-09-01

A three-phase inattentional blindness paradigm was combined with ERPs. While participants performed a distracter task, line segments in the background formed words or consonant-strings. Nearly half of the participants failed to notice these word-forms and were deemed inattentionally blind. All participants noticed the word-forms in phase 2 of the experiment while they performed the same distracter task. In the final phase, participants performed a task on the word-forms. In all phases, including during inattentional blindness, word-forms elicited distinct ERPs during early latencies (∼200-280ms) suggesting unconscious orthographic processing. A subsequent ERP (∼320-380ms) similar to the visual awareness negativity appeared only when subjects were aware of the word-forms, regardless of the task. Finally, word-forms elicited a P3b (∼400-550ms) only when these stimuli were task-relevant. These results are consistent with previous inattentional blindness studies and help distinguish brain activity associated with pre- and post-perceptual processing from correlates of conscious perception. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A defense of the subordinate-level expertise account for the N170 component.

PubMed

Rossion, Bruno; Curran, Tim; Gauthier, Isabel

2002-09-01

A recent paper in this journal reports two event-related potential (ERP) experiments interpreted as supporting the domain specificity of the visual mechanisms implicated in processing faces (Cognition 83 (2002) 1). The authors argue that because a large neurophysiological response to faces (N170) is less influenced by the task than the response to objects, and because the response for human faces extends to ape faces (for which we are not expert), we should reject the hypothesis that the face-sensitivity reflected by the N170 can be accounted for by the subordinate-level expertise model of object recognition (Nature Neuroscience 3 (2000) 764). In this commentary, we question this conclusion based on some of our own ERP work on expert object recognition as well as the work of others.

34 CFR 84.400 - What are my responsibilities as a(n) ED awarding official?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 34 Education 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false What are my responsibilities as a(n) ED awarding official? 84.400 Section 84.400 Education Office of the Secretary, Department of Education GOVERNMENTWIDE REQUIREMENTS FOR DRUG-FREE WORKPLACE (FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE) Responsibilities of ED Awarding Officials § 84.400...

The characteristic and changes of the event-related potentials (ERP) and brain topographic maps before and after treatment with rTMS in subjective tinnitus patients.

PubMed

Yang, Haidi; Xiong, Hao; Yu, Rongjun; Wang, Changming; Zheng, Yiqing; Zhang, Xueyuan

2013-01-01

To compare the event-related potentials (ERPs) and brain topographic maps characteristic and change in normal controls and subjective tinnitus patients before and after repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment. The ERPs and brain topographic maps elicited by target stimulus were compared before and after 1-week treatment with rTMS in 20 subjective tinnitus patients and 16 healthy controls. Before rTMS, target stimulus elicited a larger N1 component than the standard stimuli (repeating sounds)in control group but not in tinnitus patients. Instead, the tinnitus group pre-treatment exhibited larger amplitude of N1 in response to standard stimuli than to deviant stimuli. Furthermore tinnitus patients had smaller mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN)component at Fz compared with the control group. After rTMS treatment, tinnitus patients showed increased N1 response to deviant stimuli and larger MMN and LDN compared with pre-treatment. The topographic maps for the tinnitus group before rTMS -treatment demonstrated global asymmetry between the left and right cerebral hemispheres with more negative activities in left side and more positive activities in right side. In contrast, the brain topographic maps for patients after rTMS-treatment and controls seem roughly symmetrical. The ERP amplitudes and brain topographic maps in post-treatment patient group showed no significant difference with those in controls. The characterical changes in ERP and brain topographic maps in tinnitus patients maybe related with the electrophysiological mechanism of tinnitus induction and development. It can be used as an objective biomarker for the evaluation of auditory central in subjective tinnitus patients. These findings support the notion that rTMS treatment in tinnitus patients may exert a beneficial effect.

Evaluation of effectiveness of information systems implementation in organization (by example of ERP-systems)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demyanova, O. V.; Andreeva, E. V.; Sibgatullina, D. R.; Kireeva-Karimova, A. M.; Gafurova, A. Y.; Zakirova, Ch S.

2018-05-01

ERP in a modern enterprise information system allowed optimizing internal business processes, reducing production costs and increasing the attractiveness of enterprises for investors. It is an important component of success in the competition and an important condition for attracting investments in the key sector of the state. A vivid example of these systems are enterprise information systems using the methodology of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning - enterprise resource planning). ERP is an integrated set of methods, processes, technologies and tools. It is based on: supply chain management; advanced planning and scheduling; sales automation; tool responsible for configuring; final resource planning; intelligence business; OLAP technology; block e- Commerce; management of product data. The main purpose of ERP systems is the automation of interrelated processes of planning, accounting and management in key areas of the company. ERP systems are automated systems that effectively address complex problems, including optimal allocation of business resources, ensuring quick and efficient delivery of goods and services to the consumer. Knowledge embedded in ERP systems provided enterprise-wide automation to introduce the activities of all functional departments of the company as a single complex system. At the level of quality estimates, most managers understand that the implementations of ERP systems is a necessary and useful procedure. Assessment of the effectiveness of the information systems implementation is relevant.

Prolongation of ERP latency and reaction time (RT) in simultaneous EEG/fMRI data acquisition.

PubMed

Chun, Jinsoo; Peltier, Scott J; Yoon, Daehyun; Manschreck, Theo C; Deldin, Patricia J

2016-08-01

Recording EEG and fMRI data simultaneously inside a fully-operating scanner has been recognized as a novel approach in human brain research. Studies have demonstrated high concordance between the EEG signals and hemodynamic response. However, a few studies reported altered cognitive process inside the fMRI scanner such as delayed reaction time (RT) and reduced and/or delayed N100 and P300 event-related brain potential (ERP) components. The present study investigated the influence of electromagnetic field (static magnetic field, radio frequency (RF) pulse, and gradient switching) and experimental environment on posterior N100 and P300 ERP components in four different settings with six healthy subjects using a visual oddball task: (1) classic fMRI acquisition inside the scanner (e.g., supine position, mirror glasses for stimulus presentation), (2) standard behavioral experiment outside the scanner (e.g., seated position, keyboard response), (3) controlled fMRI acquisition inside the scanner (e.g., organic light-emitting diode (OLED) goggles for stimulus presentation) inside; and (4) modified behavioral experiment outside the scanner (e.g., supine position, OLED goggles). The study findings indicated that the experimental environment in simultaneous EEG/fMRI acquisition could substantially delay N1P, P300 latency, and RT inside the scanner, and was associated with a reduced N1P amplitude. There was no effect of electromagnetic field in the prolongation of RT, N1P and P300 latency inside the scanner. N1P, but not P300, latency was sensitive to stimulus presentation method inside the scanner. Future simultaneous EEG/fMRI data collection should consider experimental environment in both design and analysis. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ERP effects of spatial attention and display search with unilateral and bilateral stimulus displays.

PubMed

Lange, J J; Wijers, A A; Mulder, L J; Mulder, G

1999-07-01

Two experiments were performed in which the effects of selective spatial attention on the ERPs elicited by unilateral and bilateral stimulus arrays were compared. In Experiment 1, subjects received a series of grating patterns. In the unilateral condition these gratings were presented one at a time, randomly to the right or left of fixation. In the bilateral condition, gratings were presented in pairs, one to each side of fixation. In the unilateral condition standard ERP effects of visual spatial attention were observed. However, in the bilateral condition we failed to observe an attention related posterior contralateral positivity (overlapping the P1 and N1 components, latency interval about 100-250 ms), as reported in several previous studies. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether attention related ERP lateralizations are affected by the task requirement to search among multiple objects in the visual field. We employed a task paradigm identical to that used by Luck et al. (Luck, S.J., Heinze, H.J., Mangun, G.R., Hillyard, S.A., 1990. Visual event-related potentials index focused attention within bilateral stimulus arrays. II. Functional dissociation of P1 and N1 components. Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 75, 528-542). Four letters were presented to a visual hemifield, simultaneously to both the attended and unattended hemifields in the bilateral conditions, and to one hemifield only in the unilateral conditions. In a focused attention condition, subjects searched for a target letter at a fixed position, whereas they searched for the target letter among all four letters in the divided attention condition (as in the experiment of Luck et al., 1990). In the bilateral focused attention condition, only the contralateral P1 was enhanced. In the bilateral divided attention condition a prolonged posterior positivity was observed over the hemisphere contralateral to the attended hemifield, comparable to the results of Luck et al. (1990). A comparison of the

Empathy predicts false belief reasoning ability: evidence from the N400.

PubMed

Ferguson, Heather J; Cane, James E; Douchkov, Michelle; Wright, Daniel

2015-06-01

Interpreting others' actions relies on an understanding of their current mental state. Emerging research has begun to identify a number of factors that give rise to individual differences in this ability. We report an event-related brain potential study where participants (N = 28) read contexts that described a character having a true belief (TB) or false belief (FB) about an object's location. A second sentence described where that character would look for the object. Critically, this sentence included a sentence-final noun that was either consistent or inconsistent with the character's belief. Participants also completed the Empathy Quotient questionnaire. Analysis of the N400 revealed that when the character held a TB about the object's location, the N400 waveform was more negative-going for belief inconsistent vs belief consistent critical words. However, when the character held an FB about the object's location the opposite pattern was found. Intriguingly, correlations between the N400 inconsistency effect and individuals' empathy scores showed a significant correlation for FB but not TB. This suggests that people who are high in empathy can successfully interpret events according to the character's FB, while low empathizers bias their interpretation of events to their own egocentric view. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Parametric Modulation of Error-Related ERP Components by the Magnitude of Visuo-Motor Mismatch

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vocat, Roland; Pourtois, Gilles; Vuilleumier, Patrik

2011-01-01

Errors generate typical brain responses, characterized by two successive event-related potentials (ERP) following incorrect action: the error-related negativity (ERN) and the positivity error (Pe). However, it is unclear whether these error-related responses are sensitive to the magnitude of the error, or instead show all-or-none effects. We…

Design and implementation of an SVM-based computer classification system for discriminating depressive patients from healthy controls using the P600 component of ERP signals.

PubMed

Kalatzis, I; Piliouras, N; Ventouras, E; Papageorgiou, C C; Rabavilas, A D; Cavouras, D

2004-07-01

A computer-based classification system has been designed capable of distinguishing patients with depression from normal controls by event-related potential (ERP) signals using the P600 component. Clinical material comprised 25 patients with depression and an equal number of gender and aged-matched healthy controls. All subjects were evaluated by a computerized version of the digit span Wechsler test. EEG activity was recorded and digitized from 15 scalp electrodes (leads). Seventeen features related to the shape of the waveform were generated and were employed in the design of an optimum support vector machine (SVM) classifier at each lead. The outcomes of those SVM classifiers were selected by a majority-vote engine (MVE), which assigned each subject to either the normal or depressive classes. MVE classification accuracy was 94% when using all leads and 92% or 82% when using only the right or left scalp leads, respectively. These findings support the hypothesis that depression is associated with dysfunction of right hemisphere mechanisms mediating the processing of information that assigns a specific response to a specific stimulus, as those mechanisms are reflected by the P600 component of ERPs. Our method may aid the further understanding of the neurophysiology underlying depression, due to its potentiality to integrate theories of depression and psychophysiology.

Stereo Viewing Modulates Three-Dimensional Shape Processing During Object Recognition: A High-Density ERP Study

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

The role of stereo disparity in the recognition of 3-dimensional (3D) object shape remains an unresolved issue for theoretical models of the human visual system. We examined this issue using high-density (128 channel) recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs). A recognition memory task was used in which observers were trained to recognize a subset of complex, multipart, 3D novel objects under conditions of either (bi-) monocular or stereo viewing. In a subsequent test phase they discriminated previously trained targets from untrained distractor objects that shared either local parts, 3D spatial configuration, or neither dimension, across both previously seen and novel viewpoints. The behavioral data showed a stereo advantage for target recognition at untrained viewpoints. ERPs showed early differential amplitude modulations to shape similarity defined by local part structure and global 3D spatial configuration. This occurred initially during an N1 component around 145–190 ms poststimulus onset, and then subsequently during an N2/P3 component around 260–385 ms poststimulus onset. For mono viewing, amplitude modulation during the N1 was greatest between targets and distracters with different local parts for trained views only. For stereo viewing, amplitude modulation during the N2/P3 was greatest between targets and distracters with different global 3D spatial configurations and generalized across trained and untrained views. The results show that image classification is modulated by stereo information about the local part, and global 3D spatial configuration of object shape. The findings challenge current theoretical models that do not attribute functional significance to stereo input during the computation of 3D object shape. PMID:29022728

An ERP Study of Emotional Face Processing in the Adult and Infant Brain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leppanen, Jukka M.; Moulson, Margaret C.; Vogel-Farley, Vanessa K.; Nelson, Charles A.

2007-01-01

To examine the ontogeny of emotional face processing, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults and 7-month-old infants while viewing pictures of fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Face-sensitive ERPs at occipital-temporal scalp regions differentiated between fearful and neutral/happy faces in both adults (N170 was larger for fear)…

Individual Differences in ERPs during Mental Rotation of Characters: Lateralization, and Performance Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beste, Christian; Heil, Martin; Konrad, Carsten

2010-01-01

The cognitive process of imaging an object turning around is called mental rotation. Many studies have been put forward analyzing mental rotation by means of event-related potentials (ERPs). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured during mental rotation of characters in a sample (N = 82) with a sufficient size to obtain even small effects. A…

Stimulus-to-matching-stimulus interval influences N1, P2, and P3b in an equiprobable Go/NoGo task.

PubMed

Steiner, Genevieve Z; Barry, Robert J; Gonsalvez, Craig J

2014-10-01

Previous research has shown that as the stimulus-to-matching-stimulus interval (including the target-to-target interval, TTI, and nontarget-to-nontarget interval, NNI) increases, the amplitude of the P300 ERP component increases systematically. Here, we extended previous P300 research and explored TTI and NNI effects on the various ERP components elicited in an auditory equiprobable Go/NoGo task. We also examined whether a similar mechanism was underpinning interval effects in early ERP components (e.g., N1). Thirty participants completed a specially-designed variable-ISI equiprobable task whilst their EEG activity was recorded. Component amplitudes were extracted using temporal PCA with unrestricted Varimax rotation. As expected, N1, P2, and P3b amplitudes increased as TTI and NNI increased, however, Processing Negativity (PN) and Slow Wave (SW) did not show the same systematic change with interval increments. To determine the origin of interval effects in sequential processing, a multiple regression analysis was conducted on each ERP component including stimulus type, interval, and all preceding components as predictors. These analyses showed that matching-stimulus interval predicted N1, P3b, and weakly predicted P2, but not PN or SW; SW was determined by P3b only. These results suggest that N1, P3b, and to some extent, P2, are affected by a similar temporal mechanism. However, the dissimilar pattern of results obtained for sequential ERP components indicates that matching-stimulus intervals are not affecting all aspects of stimulus processing. This argues against a global mechanism, such as a pathway-specific refractory effect, and suggests that stimulus processing is occurring in parallel pathways, some of which are not affected by temporal manipulations of matching-stimulus interval. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The temporal dynamics of masked repetition picture priming effects: manipulations of stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and prime duration.

PubMed

Eddy, Marianna D; Holcomb, Phillip J

2010-06-22

The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) and masked repetition priming to examine the time-course of picture processing. We manipulated the stimulus-onset asynchrony (110 ms, 230 ms, 350 ms, and 470 ms) between repeated and unrepeated prime-target pairs while holding the prime duration constant (50 ms) (Experiment 1) as well as the prime durations (30 ms, 50 ms, 70 ms, and 90 ms) (Experiment 2) with a constant SOA of 110 ms in a masked repetition priming paradigm with pictures. The aim of this study was to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying previously observed ERP components in masked priming with pictures. We found that both the N/P190 and N400 are modulated by changes in prime duration and SOA, however, it appears that longer prime exposure rather than a longer SOA leads to more in-depth processing as indexed by larger N400 effects. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ERP Evidence for the Activation of Syntactic Structure During Comprehension of Lexical Idiom.

PubMed

Zhang, Meichao; Lu, Aitao; Song, Pingfang

2017-10-01

The present study used event-related potentials to investigate whether the syntactic structure was activated in the comprehension of lexical idioms, and if so, whether it varied as a function of familiarity and semantic transparency. Participants were asked to passively read the "1+2" structural Chinese lexical idioms with each being presented following 3-5 contextual "1+2" (congruent-structure condition) or "2+1" structural Chinese phrases (incongruent-structure condition). The N400 ERP responses showed more positivity in congruent-structure condition relative to incongruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity and high semantic transparency, but less positivity in congruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity but low semantic transparency, idioms with low familiarity but high semantic transparency, and idioms with low familiarity and low semantic transparency. Our results suggest that syntactic structure, as the unnecessarity of lexical idiomatic words, was nevertheless activated, independent of familiarity and semantic transparency.

Insights into MHC class I peptide loading from the structure of the tapasin/ERp57 heterodimer

PubMed Central

Dong, Gang; Wearsch, Pamela A.; Peaper, David R.; Cresswell, Peter; Reinisch, Karin M.

2009-01-01

SUMMARY Tapasin is a glycoprotein critical for loading Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) class I molecules with high affinity peptides. It functions within the multimeric peptide-loading complex (PLC) as a disulfide-linked, stable heterodimer with the thiol oxidoreductase ERp57, and this covalent interaction is required to support optimal PLC activity. Here we present the 2.6 Å resolution structure of the tapasin/ERp57 core of the PLC. The structure reveals the basis for the stable dimerization of tapasin and ERp57 and provides the first example of a protein disulfide isomerase family member interacting with a substrate. Mutational analysis identified a conserved surface on tapasin that interacts with MHC class I molecules and is critical for the peptide loading and editing function of the tapasin-ERp57 heterodimer. By combining the tapasin/ERp57 structure with those of other defined PLC components we present a molecular model that illuminates the processes involved in MHC class I peptide loading. PMID:19119025

The Time Course of the Influence of Valence and Arousal on the Implicit Processing of Affective Pictures

PubMed Central

Feng, Chunliang; Wang, Lili; Liu, Chao; Zhu, Xiangru; Dai, Ruina; Mai, Xiaoqin; Luo, Yue-Jia

2012-01-01

In the current study, we investigated the time course of the implicit processing of affective pictures with an orthogonal design of valence (negative vs. positive) by arousal (low vs. high). Previous studies with explicit tasks suggested that valence mainly modulates early event-related potential (ERP) components, whereas arousal mainly modulates late components. However, in this study with an implicit task, we observed significant interactions between valence and arousal at both early and late stages over both parietal and frontal sites, which were reflected by three different ERP components: P2a (100–200 ms), N2 (200–300 ms), and P3 (300–400 ms). Furthermore, there was also a significant main effect of arousal on P2b (200–300 ms) over parieto-occipital sites. Our results suggest that valence and arousal effects on implicit affective processing are more complicated than previous ERP studies with explicit tasks have revealed. PMID:22295062

Higher Education ERP: Lessons Learned.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swartz, Dave; Orgill, Ken

2001-01-01

Shares experiences and lessons learned by chief information officers of large universities about enterprise resource planning (ERP). Specifically, provides a framework for approaching an ERP that could save universities millions of dollars. (EV)

The Effects of Face Inversion and Face Race on the P100 ERP.

PubMed

Colombatto, Clara; McCarthy, Gregory

2017-04-01

Research about the neural basis of face recognition has investigated the timing and anatomical substrates of different stages of face processing. Scalp-recorded ERP studies of face processing have focused on the N170, an ERP with a peak latency of ∼170 msec that has long been associated with the initial structural encoding of faces. However, several studies have reported earlier ERP differences related to faces, suggesting that face-specific processes might occur before N170. Here, we examined the influence of face inversion and face race on the timing of face-sensitive scalp-recorded ERPs by examining neural responses to upright and inverted line-drawn and luminance-matched white and black faces in a sample of white participants. We found that the P100 ERP evoked by inverted faces was significantly larger than that evoked by upright faces. Although this inversion effect was statistically significant at 100 msec, the inverted-upright ERP difference peaked at 138 msec, suggesting that it might represent an activity in neural sources that overlap with P100. Inverse modeling of the inversion effect difference waveform suggested possible neural sources in pericalcarine extrastriate visual cortex and lateral occipito-temporal cortex. We also found that the inversion effect difference wave was larger for white faces. These results are consistent with behavioral evidence that individuals process the faces of their own races more configurally than faces of other races. Taken together, the inversion and race effects observed in the current study suggest that configuration influences face processing by at least 100 msec.

Dissociating Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Gesture Processing: Electrophysiological Evidence from American Sign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grosvald, Michael; Gutierrez, Eva; Hafer, Sarah; Corina, David

2012-01-01

A fundamental advance in our understanding of human language would come from a detailed account of how non-linguistic and linguistic manual actions are differentiated in real time by language users. To explore this issue, we targeted the N400, an ERP component known to be sensitive to semantic context. Deaf signers saw 120 American Sign Language…

Words and Melody Are Intertwined in Perception of Sung Words: EEG and Behavioral Evidence

PubMed Central

Gordon, Reyna L.; Schön, Daniele; Magne, Cyrille; Astésano, Corine; Besson, Mireille

2010-01-01

Language and music, two of the most unique human cognitive abilities, are combined in song, rendering it an ecological model for comparing speech and music cognition. The present study was designed to determine whether words and melodies in song are processed interactively or independently, and to examine the influence of attention on the processing of words and melodies in song. Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data were recorded while non-musicians listened to pairs of sung words (prime and target) presented in four experimental conditions: same word, same melody; same word, different melody; different word, same melody; different word, different melody. Participants were asked to attend to either the words or the melody, and to perform a same/different task. In both attentional tasks, different word targets elicited an N400 component, as predicted based on previous results. Most interestingly, different melodies (sung with the same word) elicited an N400 component followed by a late positive component. Finally, ERP and behavioral data converged in showing interactions between the linguistic and melodic dimensions of sung words. The finding that the N400 effect, a well-established marker of semantic processing, was modulated by musical melody in song suggests that variations in musical features affect word processing in sung language. Implications of the interactions between words and melody are discussed in light of evidence for shared neural processing resources between the phonological/semantic aspects of language and the melodic/harmonic aspects of music. PMID:20360991

ERP evaluation of auditory sensory memory systems in adults with intellectual disability.

PubMed

Ikeda, Kazunari; Hashimoto, Souichi; Hayashi, Akiko; Kanno, Atsushi

2009-01-01

Auditory sensory memory stage can be functionally divided into two subsystems; transient-detector system and permanent feature-detector system (Naatanen, 1992). We assessed these systems in persons with intellectual disability by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) N1 and mismatch negativity (MMN), which reflect the two auditory subsystems, respectively. Added to these, P3a (an ERP reflecting stage after sensory memory) was evaluated. Either synthesized vowels or simple tones were delivered during a passive oddball paradigm to adults with and without intellectual disability. ERPs were recorded from midline scalp sites (Fz, Cz, and Pz). Relative to control group, participants with the disability exhibited greater N1 latency and less MMN amplitude. The results for N1 amplitude and MMN latency were basically comparable between both groups. IQ scores in participants with the disability revealed no significant relation with N1 and MMN measures, whereas the IQ scores tended to increase significantly as P3a latency reduced. These outcomes suggest that persons with intellectual disability might own discrete malfunctions for the two detector systems in auditory sensory-memory stage. Moreover, the processes following sensory memory might be partly related to a determinant of mental development.

Incorporating an ERP Project into Undergraduate Instruction

PubMed Central

Nyhus, Erika; Curtis, Nancy

2016-01-01

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a relatively non-invasive, simple technique, and recent advances in open source analysis tools make it feasible to implement EEG as a component in undergraduate neuroscience curriculum. We have successfully led students to design novel experiments, record EEG data, and analyze event-related potentials (ERPs) during a one-semester laboratory course for undergraduates in cognitive neuroscience. First, students learned how to set up an EEG recording and completed an analysis tutorial. Students then learned how to set up a novel EEG experiment; briefly, they formed groups of four and designed an EEG experiment on a topic of their choice. Over the course of two weeks students collected behavioral and EEG data. Each group then analyzed their behavioral and ERP data and presented their results both as a presentation and as a final paper. Upon completion of the group project students reported a deeper understanding of cognitive neuroscience methods and a greater appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of the EEG technique. Although recent advances in open source software made this project possible, it also required access to EEG recording equipment and proprietary software. Future efforts should be directed at making publicly available datasets to learn ERP analysis techniques and making publicly available EEG recording and analysis software to increase the accessibility of hands-on research experience in undergraduate cognitive neuroscience laboratory courses. PMID:27385925

Mindfulness based cognitive therapy may improve emotional processing in bipolar disorder: pilot ERP and HRV study.

PubMed

Howells, Fleur M; Laurie Rauch, H G; Ives-Deliperi, Victoria L; Horn, Neil R; Stein, Dan J

2014-06-01

Emotional processing in bipolar disorder (BD) is impaired. We aimed to measure the effects of mindfulness based cognitive-behavioral therapy (MBCT) in BD on emotional processing, as measured by event related potentials (ERP) and by heart rate variability (HRV). ERP and HRV were recorded during the completion of a visual matching task, which included object matching, affect matching, and affect labeling. Individuals with BD (n = 12) were compared with controls (n = 9) to obtain baseline data prior to the individuals with BD undergoing an 8-week MBCT intervention. ERP and HRV recording was repeated after the MBCT intervention in BD. Participants with BD had exaggerated ERP N170 amplitude and increased HRV HF peak compared to controls, particularly during the affect matching condition. After an 8-week MBCT intervention, participants with BD showed attenuation of ERP N170 amplitude and reduced HRV HF peak. Our findings support findings from the literature emphasizing that emotional processing in BD is altered, and suggesting that MBCT may improve emotional processing in BD.

Sentences with core knowledge violations increase the size of N400 among paranormal believers.

PubMed

Lindeman, Marjaana; Cederström, Sebastian; Simola, Petteri; Simula, Anni; Ollikainen, Sara; Riekki, Tapani

2008-01-01

A major problem in research on paranormal beliefs is that the concept of "paranormality" remains to be adequately defined. The aim of this study was to empirically justify the following definition: paranormal beliefs are beliefs in physical, biological, or psychological phenomena that contain core ontological attributes of one of the other two categories [e.g., a stone (physical) having thoughts (psychological)]. We hypothesized that individuals who believe in paranormal phenomena are slower in understanding whether sentences with core knowledge violations are literally true than skeptics, and that this difference would be reflected by a more negative N400. Ten believers and 10 skeptics (six men, age range 23-49) participated in the study. Event-related potentials (N400) were recorded as the participants read 210 three-word Finnish sentences, of which 70 were normal ("The house has a history"), 70 were anomalies ("The house writes its history") and 70 included violations of core knowledge ("The house knows its history"). The participants were presented with a question that contextualized the sentences: "Is this sentence literally true?" While the N400 effects were similar for normal and anomalous sentences among the believers and the skeptics, a more negative N400 effect was found among the believers than among the skeptics for sentences with core knowledge violations. The results support the new definition of "paranormality", because participants who believed in paranormal phenomena appeared to find it more difficult to construct a reasonable interpretation of the sentences with core knowledge violations than the skeptics did as indicated by the N400.

Disentangling Metaphor from Context: An ERP Study

PubMed Central

Bambini, Valentina; Bertini, Chiara; Schaeken, Walter; Stella, Alessandra; Di Russo, Francesco

2016-01-01

A large body of electrophysiological literature showed that metaphor comprehension elicits two different event-related brain potential responses, namely the so-called N400 and P600 components. Yet most of these studies test metaphor in isolation while in natural conversation metaphors do not come out of the blue but embedded in linguistic and extra-linguistic context. This study aimed at assessing the role of context in the metaphor comprehension process. We recorded EEG activity while participants were presented with metaphors and equivalent literal expressions in a minimal context (Experiment 1) and in a supportive context where the word expressing the ground between the metaphor's topic and vehicle was made explicit (Experiment 2). The N400 effect was visible only in minimal context, whereas the P600 was visible both in the absence and in the presence of contextual cues. These findings suggest that the N400 observed for metaphor is related to contextual aspects, possibly indexing contextual expectations on upcoming words that guide lexical access and retrieval, while the P600 seems to reflect truly pragmatic interpretative processes needed to make sense of a metaphor and derive the speaker's meaning, also in the presence of contextual cues. In sum, previous information in the linguistic context biases toward a metaphorical interpretation but does not suppress interpretative pragmatic mechanisms to establish the intended meaning. PMID:27199799

Disentangling Metaphor from Context: An ERP Study.

PubMed

Bambini, Valentina; Bertini, Chiara; Schaeken, Walter; Stella, Alessandra; Di Russo, Francesco

2016-01-01

A large body of electrophysiological literature showed that metaphor comprehension elicits two different event-related brain potential responses, namely the so-called N400 and P600 components. Yet most of these studies test metaphor in isolation while in natural conversation metaphors do not come out of the blue but embedded in linguistic and extra-linguistic context. This study aimed at assessing the role of context in the metaphor comprehension process. We recorded EEG activity while participants were presented with metaphors and equivalent literal expressions in a minimal context (Experiment 1) and in a supportive context where the word expressing the ground between the metaphor's topic and vehicle was made explicit (Experiment 2). The N400 effect was visible only in minimal context, whereas the P600 was visible both in the absence and in the presence of contextual cues. These findings suggest that the N400 observed for metaphor is related to contextual aspects, possibly indexing contextual expectations on upcoming words that guide lexical access and retrieval, while the P600 seems to reflect truly pragmatic interpretative processes needed to make sense of a metaphor and derive the speaker's meaning, also in the presence of contextual cues. In sum, previous information in the linguistic context biases toward a metaphorical interpretation but does not suppress interpretative pragmatic mechanisms to establish the intended meaning.

Neuromarkers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a patient after bilateral hand amputation - ERP case study.

PubMed

Chrapusta, Anna; Kropotov, Juri D; Pąchalska, Maria

2017-06-08

Introduction. There is a lack in the worldwide literature of reports on the Neuromarkers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in patients after bilateral hand amputation The aim of this study was to test a hypothesis regarding developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a patient after bilateral hand amputation with the use of Event Related Potentials (ERPs). On the basis of previous research, the amplitudes of P3 ERP components elicited in the cued GO/NOGO tasks have been chosen as candidates for neuromarkers of PTSD. Case study. A 24-year-old patient had undergone bilateral hand amputation 12 months previously. The patient was repeatedly operated on (he had undergone successful bilateral hand replantation) and despite the severity of the injuries, he recovered. However, the patient complained of flashbacks, anxiety and sleep difficulties. Specialist tests showed the presence of PTSD. The patient participated in the cued GO/NOGO task (Kropotov, 2009) with recording 19-channel EEG. P3 GO and NOGO waves in this task were found to be significantly smaller, in comparison to a group of healthy control subjects of the same age (N=23) taken from the HBI normative database (https://www.hbimed.com/). This observed pattern of ERP waves in the patient corresponds to the pattern found in PTSD patients. Conclusions. ERPs in a GO/NOGO task can be used in the assessment of the functional brain changes induced by chronic PTSD.

Gender and suppression of mid-latency ERP components during stress.

PubMed

White, Patricia M; Kanazawa, Asako; Yee, Cindy M

2005-11-01

Substantial research evidence suggests that women may be more reactive to stress than men. This study examined the influence of gender and stress on suppression of the P50 and N100 components of the auditory event-related potential. During a stressor task, women (n=13) showed disrupted P50 and N100 suppression whereas men (n=15) exhibited only alterations in N100 suppression. Additionally, reduced skin conductance level during stress correlated with impaired P50 suppression and elevated Click 2 amplitude of the P50 response in women. These data suggest that gender differences in response to perceived stress may be an important factor to consider in studies relying upon the P50 suppression paradigm.

Self-Referential Information Alleviates Retrieval Inhibition of Directed Forgetting Effects-An ERP Evidence of Source Memory.

PubMed

Mao, Xinrui; Wang, Yujuan; Wu, Yanhong; Guo, Chunyan

2017-01-01

Directed forgetting (DF) assists in preventing outdated information from interfering with cognitive processing. Previous studies pointed that self-referential items alleviated DF effects due to the elaboration of encoding processes. However, the retrieval mechanism of this phenomenon remains unknown. Based on the dual-process framework of recognition, the retrieval of self-referential information was involved in familiarity and recollection. Using source memory tasks combined with event-related potential (ERP) recording, our research investigated the retrieval processes of alleviative DF effects elicited by self-referential information. The FN400 (frontal negativity at 400 ms) is a frontal potential at 300-500 ms related to familiarity and the late positive complex (LPC) is a later parietal potential at 500-800 ms related to recollection. The FN400 effects of source memory suggested that familiarity processes were promoted by self-referential effects without the modulation of to-be-forgotten (TBF) instruction. The ERP results of DF effects were involved with LPCs of source memory, which indexed retrieval processing of recollection. The other-referential source memory of TBF instruction caused the absence of LPC effects, while the self-referential source memory of TBF instruction still elicited the significant LPC effects. Therefore, our neural findings suggested that self-referential processing improved both familiarity and recollection. Furthermore, the self-referential processing advantage which was caused by the autobiographical retrieval alleviated retrieval inhibition of DF, supporting that the self-referential source memory alleviated DF effects.

Self-Referential Information Alleviates Retrieval Inhibition of Directed Forgetting Effects—An ERP Evidence of Source Memory

PubMed Central

Mao, Xinrui; Wang, Yujuan; Wu, Yanhong; Guo, Chunyan

2017-01-01

Directed forgetting (DF) assists in preventing outdated information from interfering with cognitive processing. Previous studies pointed that self-referential items alleviated DF effects due to the elaboration of encoding processes. However, the retrieval mechanism of this phenomenon remains unknown. Based on the dual-process framework of recognition, the retrieval of self-referential information was involved in familiarity and recollection. Using source memory tasks combined with event-related potential (ERP) recording, our research investigated the retrieval processes of alleviative DF effects elicited by self-referential information. The FN400 (frontal negativity at 400 ms) is a frontal potential at 300–500 ms related to familiarity and the late positive complex (LPC) is a later parietal potential at 500–800 ms related to recollection. The FN400 effects of source memory suggested that familiarity processes were promoted by self-referential effects without the modulation of to-be-forgotten (TBF) instruction. The ERP results of DF effects were involved with LPCs of source memory, which indexed retrieval processing of recollection. The other-referential source memory of TBF instruction caused the absence of LPC effects, while the self-referential source memory of TBF instruction still elicited the significant LPC effects. Therefore, our neural findings suggested that self-referential processing improved both familiarity and recollection. Furthermore, the self-referential processing advantage which was caused by the autobiographical retrieval alleviated retrieval inhibition of DF, supporting that the self-referential source memory alleviated DF effects. PMID:29066962

ERP denoising in multichannel EEG data using contrasts between signal and noise subspaces.

PubMed

Ivannikov, Andriy; Kalyakin, Igor; Hämäläinen, Jarmo; Leppänen, Paavo H T; Ristaniemi, Tapani; Lyytinen, Heikki; Kärkkäinen, Tommi

2009-06-15

In this paper, a new method intended for ERP denoising in multichannel EEG data is discussed. The denoising is done by separating ERP/noise subspaces in multidimensional EEG data by a linear transformation and the following dimension reduction by ignoring noise components during inverse transformation. The separation matrix is found based on the assumption that ERP sources are deterministic for all repetitions of the same type of stimulus within the experiment, while the other noise sources do not obey the determinancy property. A detailed derivation of the technique is given together with the analysis of the results of its application to a real high-density EEG data set. The interpretation of the results and the performance of the proposed method under conditions, when the basic assumptions are violated - e.g. the problem is underdetermined - are also discussed. Moreover, we study how the factors of the number of channels and trials used by the method influence the effectiveness of ERP/noise subspaces separation. In addition, we explore also the impact of different data resampling strategies on the performance of the considered algorithm. The results can help in determining the optimal parameters of the equipment/methods used to elicit and reliably estimate ERPs.

ERPS to Monitor Non-conscious Mentation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Donchin, E.

1984-01-01

Event Related Brain Potentials (or ERPs) are extracted from the EEG that can be recorded between a pair of electrodes placed on a person's scalp. The EEG is recorded as a continual fluctuation in voltage. It is the results of the integration of the potential fields generated by a multitude of neuronal ensembles that are active as the brain goes about its business. Within this ongoing signal it is possible to distinguish voltage fluctuations that are triggered in neural structures by the occurrence of specific events. This activity, evoked as it is by an external event, is known as the Evoked, or Event Related, Potential. The ERPs provide a unique opportunity to monitor non-conscious mentation. The inferences that can be based on ERP data are described and the limits of these inferences are emphasized. This, however, will not be an exhaustive review of the use of ERPs in Engineering Psychology. The application, its scope, and its limitations will be illustrated by means of one example. This example is preceded by a brief technical introduction to the methodology used in the study of ERPs. The manner in which ERPs are used to study cognition is described.

Relationships between event-related potentials and behavioral and scholastic measures of reading ability: A large-scale, cross-sectional study.

PubMed

Khalifian, Negin; Stites, Mallory C; Laszlo, Sarah

2016-09-01

In the cognitive, computational, neuropsychological, and educational literatures, it is established that children approach text in unique ways, and that even adult readers can differ in the strategies they bring to reading. In the developmental event-related potential (ERP) literature, however, children with differing degrees of reading ability are, the majority of the time, placed in monolithic groups such as 'normal' and 'dyslexic' (e.g. Araújo et al., 2012) and analyzed only at the group level. This is likely done due to methodological concerns - such as low sample size or a lack of statistical power - that can make it difficult to perform analysis at the individual level. Here, we collected ERPs and behavior from > 100 children in grades pre-K-7, as they read unconnected text silently to themselves. This large sample, combined with the statistical power of the Linear Mixed Effects Regression (LMER) technique, enables us to address individual differences in ERP component effects due to reading ability at an unprecedented level of detail. Results indicate that it is possible to predict reading-related report card scores from ERP component amplitudes - especially that of the N250, a component pertaining to sublexical processing (including phonological decoding). Results also reveal relationships between behavioral measures of reading ability and ERP component effects that have previously been elusive, such as the relationship between vocabulary and N400 mean amplitude (cf. Henderson et al., 2011). We conclude that it is possible to meaningfully examine reading-related ERP effects at the single subject level in developing readers, and that this type of analysis can provide novel insights into both behavior and scholastic achievement. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Emotional self-other voice processing in schizophrenia and its relationship with hallucinations: ERP evidence.

PubMed

Pinheiro, Ana P; Rezaii, Neguine; Rauber, Andréia; Nestor, Paul G; Spencer, Kevin M; Niznikiewicz, Margaret

2017-09-01

Abnormalities in self-other voice processing have been observed in schizophrenia, and may underlie the experience of hallucinations. More recent studies demonstrated that these impairments are enhanced for speech stimuli with negative content. Nonetheless, few studies probed the temporal dynamics of self versus nonself speech processing in schizophrenia and, particularly, the impact of semantic valence on self-other voice discrimination. In the current study, we examined these questions, and additionally probed whether impairments in these processes are associated with the experience of hallucinations. Fifteen schizophrenia patients and 16 healthy controls listened to 420 prerecorded adjectives differing in voice identity (self-generated [SGS] versus nonself speech [NSS]) and semantic valence (neutral, positive, and negative), while EEG data were recorded. The N1, P2, and late positive potential (LPP) ERP components were analyzed. ERP results revealed group differences in the interaction between voice identity and valence in the P2 and LPP components. Specifically, LPP amplitude was reduced in patients compared with healthy subjects for SGS and NSS with negative content. Further, auditory hallucinations severity was significantly predicted by LPP amplitude: the higher the SAPS "voices conversing" score, the larger the difference in LPP amplitude between negative and positive NSS. The absence of group differences in the N1 suggests that self-other voice processing abnormalities in schizophrenia are not primarily driven by disrupted sensory processing of voice acoustic information. The association between LPP amplitude and hallucination severity suggests that auditory hallucinations are associated with enhanced sustained attention to negative cues conveyed by a nonself voice. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

ERP correlates of attention allocation in mothers processing faces of their children

PubMed Central

Grasso, Damion J.; Moser, Jason S.; Dozier, Mary; Simons, Robert

2012-01-01

This study employed visually evoked event-related potential (ERP) methodology to examine temporal patterns of structural and higher-level face processing in birth and foster/adoptive mothers viewing pictures of their children. Fourteen birth mothers and 14 foster/adoptive mothers engaged in a computerized task in which they viewed facial pictures of their own children, and of familiar and unfamiliar children and adults. All mothers, regardless of type, showed ERP patterns suggestive of increased attention allocation to their own children’s faces compared to other child and adult faces beginning as early as 100–150 ms after stimulus onset and lasting for several hundred milliseconds. These data are in line with a parallel processing model that posits the involvement of several brain regions in simultaneously encoding the structural features of faces as well as their emotional and personal significance. Additionally, late positive ERP patterns associated with greater allocation of attention predicted mothers’ perceptions of the parent–child relationship as positive and influential to their children’s psychological development. These findings suggest the potential utility of using ERP components to index maternal processes. PMID:19428973

Visual search and spatial attention: ERPs in focussed and divided attention conditions.

PubMed

Wijers, A A; Okita, T; Mulder, G; Mulder, L J; Lorist, M M; Poiesz, R; Scheffers, M K

1987-08-01

ERPs and performance were measured in divided and focussed attention visual search tasks. In focussed attention tasks, to-be-attended and to-be-ignored letters were presented simultaneously. We varied display load, mapping conditions and display size. RT, P3b-latency and negativity in the ERP associated with controlled search all increased with display load. Each of these measures showed selectivity of controlled search, in that they decreased with focussing of attention. An occipital N230, on the other hand, was not sensitive to focussing of attention, but was primarily affected by display load. ERPs to both attended and unattended targets in focussed attention conditions showed and N2 compared to nontargets, suggesting that both automatic and controlled letter classifications are possible. These effects were not affected by display size. Consistent mapping resulted in shorter RT and P3b-latency in divided attention conditions, compared to varied mapping conditions, but had no effect in focussed attention conditions.

Emotion Processing by ERP Combined with Development and Plasticity.

PubMed

Ding, Rui; Li, Ping; Wang, Wei; Luo, Wenbo

2017-01-01

Emotions important for survival and social interaction have received wide and deep investigations. The application of the fMRI technique into emotion processing has obtained overwhelming achievements with respect to the localization of emotion processes. The ERP method, which possesses highly temporal resolution compared to fMRI, can be employed to investigate the time course of emotion processing. The emotional modulation of the ERP component has been verified across numerous researches. Emotions, described as dynamically developing along with the growing age, have the possibility to be enhanced through learning (or training) or to be damaged due to disturbances in growth, which is underlain by the neural plasticity of emotion-relevant nervous systems. And mood disorders with typical symptoms of emotion discordance probably have been caused by the dysfunctional neural plasticity.

Emotion Processing by ERP Combined with Development and Plasticity

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Emotions important for survival and social interaction have received wide and deep investigations. The application of the fMRI technique into emotion processing has obtained overwhelming achievements with respect to the localization of emotion processes. The ERP method, which possesses highly temporal resolution compared to fMRI, can be employed to investigate the time course of emotion processing. The emotional modulation of the ERP component has been verified across numerous researches. Emotions, described as dynamically developing along with the growing age, have the possibility to be enhanced through learning (or training) or to be damaged due to disturbances in growth, which is underlain by the neural plasticity of emotion-relevant nervous systems. And mood disorders with typical symptoms of emotion discordance probably have been caused by the dysfunctional neural plasticity. PMID:28831313

7 CFR 1730.28 - Emergency Restoration Plan (ERP).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 11 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false Emergency Restoration Plan (ERP). 1730.28 Section... § 1730.28 Emergency Restoration Plan (ERP). (a) Each borrower with an approved RUS electric program loan as of October 12, 2004 shall have a written ERP no later than January 12, 2006. The ERP should be...

Differential processing of part-to-whole and part-to-part face priming: an ERP study.

PubMed

Jemel, B; George, N; Chaby, L; Fiori, N; Renault, B

1999-04-06

We provide electrophysiological evidence supporting the hypothesis that part and whole face processing involve distinct functional mechanisms. We used a congruency judgment task and studied part-to-whole and part-to-part priming effects. Neither part-to-whole nor part-to-part conditions elicited early congruency effects on face-specific ERP components, suggesting that activation of the internal representations should occur later on. However, these components showed differential responsiveness to whole faces and isolated eyes. In addition, although late ERP components were affected when the eye targets were not associated with the prime in both conditions, their temporal and topographical features depended on the latter. These differential effects suggest the existence of distributed neural networks in the inferior temporal cortex where part and whole facial representations may be stored.

Revisiting the Incremental Effects of Context on Word Processing: Evidence from Single-Word Event-Related Brain Potentials

PubMed Central

Payne, Brennan R.; Lee, Chia-Lin; Federmeier, Kara D.

2015-01-01

The amplitude of the N400— an event-related potential (ERP) component linked to meaning processing and initial access to semantic memory— is inversely related to the incremental build-up of semantic context over the course of a sentence. We revisited the nature and scope of this incremental context effect, adopting a word-level linear mixed-effects modeling approach, with the goal of probing the continuous and incremental effects of semantic and syntactic context on multiple aspects of lexical processing during sentence comprehension (i.e., effects of word frequency and orthographic neighborhood). First, we replicated the classic word position effect at the single-word level: open-class words showed reductions in N400 amplitude with increasing word position in semantically congruent sentences only. Importantly, we found that accruing sentence context had separable influences on the effects of frequency and neighborhood on the N400. Word frequency effects were reduced with accumulating semantic context. However, orthographic neighborhood was unaffected by accumulating context, showing robust effects on the N400 across all words, even within congruent sentences. Additionally, we found that N400 amplitudes to closed-class words were reduced with incrementally constraining syntactic context in sentences that provided only syntactic constraints. Taken together, our findings indicate that modeling word-level variability in ERPs reveals mechanisms by which different sources of information simultaneously contribute to the unfolding neural dynamics of comprehension. PMID:26311477

Revisiting the incremental effects of context on word processing: Evidence from single-word event-related brain potentials.

PubMed

Payne, Brennan R; Lee, Chia-Lin; Federmeier, Kara D

2015-11-01

The amplitude of the N400-an event-related potential (ERP) component linked to meaning processing and initial access to semantic memory-is inversely related to the incremental buildup of semantic context over the course of a sentence. We revisited the nature and scope of this incremental context effect, adopting a word-level linear mixed-effects modeling approach, with the goal of probing the continuous and incremental effects of semantic and syntactic context on multiple aspects of lexical processing during sentence comprehension (i.e., effects of word frequency and orthographic neighborhood). First, we replicated the classic word-position effect at the single-word level: Open-class words showed reductions in N400 amplitude with increasing word position in semantically congruent sentences only. Importantly, we found that accruing sentence context had separable influences on the effects of frequency and neighborhood on the N400. Word frequency effects were reduced with accumulating semantic context. However, orthographic neighborhood was unaffected by accumulating context, showing robust effects on the N400 across all words, even within congruent sentences. Additionally, we found that N400 amplitudes to closed-class words were reduced with incrementally constraining syntactic context in sentences that provided only syntactic constraints. Taken together, our findings indicate that modeling word-level variability in ERPs reveals mechanisms by which different sources of information simultaneously contribute to the unfolding neural dynamics of comprehension. © 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

ERP implementation in rural health care.

PubMed

Trimmer, Kenneth J; Pumphrey, Lela D; Wiggins, Carla

2002-01-01

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems provide organizations with the opportunity to integrate individual, functionally-oriented information systems. Although much of the focus in the popular press has been placed on ERP systems in large for-profit organizations, small hospitals and clinics are candidates for ERP systems. Focusing information systems on critical success factors (CSFs) allows the organization to address a limited number of areas associated with performance. This limited number of factors can provide management with an insight into dimensions of information that must be addressed by a system. Focuses on CSFs for small health-care organizations. In addition, also considers factors critical to the implementation of health-care information systems. Presents two cases. The results indicate support for the continuing use of CSFs to help focus on the benefits of ERPs. Focusing on groups of tangible and intangible benefits can also assist the rural health-care organization in the use of ERPs.

Dissociated roles of the anterior cingulate cortex in reward and conflict processing as revealed by the feedback error-related negativity and N200.

PubMed

Baker, Travis E; Holroyd, Clay B

2011-04-01

The reinforcement learning theory of the error-related negativity (ERN) holds that the impact of reward signals carried by the midbrain dopamine system modulates activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), alternatively disinhibiting and inhibiting the ACC following unpredicted error and reward events, respectively. According to a recent formulation of the theory, activity that is intrinsic to the ACC produces a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) called the N200, and following unpredicted rewards, the N200 is suppressed by extrinsically applied positive dopamine reward signals, resulting in an ERP component called the feedback-ERN (fERN). Here we demonstrate that, despite extensive spatial and temporal overlap between the two ERP components, the functional processes indexed by the N200 (conflict) and the fERN (reward) are dissociable. These results point toward avenues for future investigation. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Electrophysiological difference between the representations of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory.

PubMed

Chen, Qingfei; Liang, Xiuling; Lei, Yi; Li, Hong

2015-05-01

Causally related concepts like "virus" and "epidemic" and general associatively related concepts like "ring" and "emerald" are represented and accessed separately. The Evoked Response Potential (ERP) procedure was used to examine the representations of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory. Participants were required to remember a task cue (causal or associative) presented at the beginning of each trial, and assess whether the relationship between subsequently presented words matched the initial task cue. The ERP data showed that an N400 effect (250-450 ms) was more negative for unrelated words than for all related words. Furthermore, the N400 effect elicited by causal relations was more positive than for associative relations in causal cue condition, whereas no significant difference was found in the associative cue condition. The centrally distributed late ERP component (650-750 ms) elicited by the causal cue condition was more positive than for the associative cue condition. These results suggested that the processing of causal judgment and associative judgment in semantic memory recruited different degrees of attentional and executive resources. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Won't get fooled again: An event-related potential study of task and repetition effects on the semantic processing of items without semantics.

PubMed

Laszlo, Sarah; Stites, Mallory; Federmeier, Kara D

2012-01-01

A growing body of evidence suggests that semantic access is obligatory. Several studies have demonstrated that brain activity associated with semantic processing, measured in the N400 component of the event-related brain potential (ERP), is elicited even by meaningless, orthographically illegal strings, suggesting that semantic access is not gated by lexicality. However, the downstream consequences of that activity vary by item type, exemplified by the typical finding that N400 activity is reduced by repetition for words and pronounceable nonwords but not for illegal strings. We propose that this lack of repetition effect for illegal strings is caused not by lack of contact with semantics, but by the unrefined nature of that contact under conditions in which illegal strings can be readily categorised as task-irrelevant. To test this, we collected ERPs from participants performing a modified Lexical Decision Task, in which the presence of orthographically illegal acronyms rendered meaningless illegal strings more difficult lures than normal. Confirming our hypothesis, under these conditions illegal strings elicited robust N400 repetition effects, quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those elicited by words, pseudowords, and acronyms.

Dimension reduction: additional benefit of an optimal filter for independent component analysis to extract event-related potentials.

PubMed

Cong, Fengyu; Leppänen, Paavo H T; Astikainen, Piia; Hämäläinen, Jarmo; Hietanen, Jari K; Ristaniemi, Tapani

2011-09-30

The present study addresses benefits of a linear optimal filter (OF) for independent component analysis (ICA) in extracting brain event-related potentials (ERPs). A filter such as the digital filter is usually considered as a denoising tool. Actually, in filtering ERP recordings by an OF, the ERP' topography should not be changed by the filter, and the output should also be able to be modeled by the linear transformation. Moreover, an OF designed for a specific ERP source or component may remove noise, as well as reduce the overlap of sources and even reject some non-targeted sources in the ERP recordings. The OF can thus accomplish both the denoising and dimension reduction (reducing the number of sources) simultaneously. We demonstrated these effects using two datasets, one containing visual and the other auditory ERPs. The results showed that the method including OF and ICA extracted much more reliable components than the sole ICA without OF did, and that OF removed some non-targeted sources and made the underdetermined model of EEG recordings approach to the determined one. Thus, we suggest designing an OF based on the properties of an ERP to filter recordings before using ICA decomposition to extract the targeted ERP component. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

No effects of a single 3G UMTS mobile phone exposure on spontaneous EEG activity, ERP correlates, and automatic deviance detection.

PubMed

Trunk, Attila; Stefanics, Gábor; Zentai, Norbert; Kovács-Bálint, Zsófia; Thuróczy, György; Hernádi, István

2013-01-01

Potential effects of a 30 min exposure to third generation (3G) Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile phone-like electromagnetic fields (EMFs) were investigated on human brain electrical activity in two experiments. In the first experiment, spontaneous electroencephalography (sEEG) was analyzed (n = 17); in the second experiment, auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) and automatic deviance detection processes reflected by mismatch negativity (MMN) were investigated in a passive oddball paradigm (n = 26). Both sEEG and ERP experiments followed a double-blind protocol where subjects were exposed to either genuine or sham irradiation in two separate sessions. In both experiments, electroencephalograms (EEG) were recorded at midline electrode sites before and after exposure while subjects were watching a silent documentary. Spectral power of sEEG data was analyzed in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands. In the ERP experiment, subjects were presented with a random series of standard (90%) and frequency-deviant (10%) tones in a passive binaural oddball paradigm. The amplitude and latency of the P50, N100, P200, MMN, and P3a components were analyzed. We found no measurable effects of a 30 min 3G mobile phone irradiation on the EEG spectral power in any frequency band studied. Also, we found no significant effects of EMF irradiation on the amplitude and latency of any of the ERP components. In summary, the present results do not support the notion that a 30 min unilateral 3G EMF exposure interferes with human sEEG activity, auditory evoked potentials or automatic deviance detection indexed by MMN. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Design Patterns Application in the ERP Systems Improvements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jovičić, Bojan; Vlajić, Siniša

Design patterns application have long been present in software engineering. The same is true for ERP systems in business software. Is it possible that ERP systems do not have a good maintenance score? We have found out that there is room for maintenance improvement and that it is possible to improve ERP systems using design patterns. We have conducted comparative analysis of ease of maintenance of the ERP systems. The results show that the average score for our questions is 64%, with most answers for ERP systems like SAP, Oracle EBS, Dynamics AX. We found that 59% of ERP system developer users are not familiar with design patterns. Based on this research, we have chosen Dynamics AX as the ERP system for examination of design patterns improvement possibilities. We used software metrics to measure improvement possibility. We found that we could increase the Conditional Complexity score 17-fold by introducing design patterns.

7Li(p,n)7Be and 12C(p,n)12N reactions at 200, 300, and 400 MeV

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watson, J. W.; Pourang, R.; Abegg, R.; Alford, W. P.; Celler, A.; El-Kateb, S.; Frekers, D.; Häusser, O.; Helmer, R.; Henderson, R.; Hicks, K.; Jackson, K. P.; Jeppesen, R. G.; Miller, C. A.; Vetterli, M.; Yen, S.; Zafiratos, C. D.

1989-07-01

At 200, 300, and 400 MeV bombarding energies, we measured cross section angular distributions for the 7Li(p,n)7Be(g.s.+0.43 MeV) reaction and 0° cross sections for the 12C(p,n)12N(g.s.) reaction. Systematics of these reactions are presented. The center-of-mass cross section for the 7Li(p,n)7Be(g.s.+0.43 MeV) reaction, when plotted as a function of momentum transfer, is nearly independent of energy. The laboratory cross section for this reaction at 0° in the energy range from 60 to 400 MeV is also independent of energy, having a constant value, to within experimental errors, of 35.5 mb/sr with an estimated uncertainty of +/-1.5 mb/sr.

Ten years on: a follow-up review of ERP research in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

PubMed

Johnstone, Stuart J; Barry, Robert J; Clarke, Adam R

2013-04-01

This article reviews the event-related potential (ERP) literature in relation to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) over the years 2002-2012. ERP studies exploring various aspects of brain functioning in children and adolescents with AD/HD are reviewed, with a focus on group effects and interpretations in the domains of attention, inhibitory control, performance monitoring, non-pharmacological treatments, and ERP/energetics interactions. There has been a distinct shift in research intensity over the past 10 years, with a large increase in ERP studies conducted in the areas of inhibitory control and performance monitoring. Overall, the research has identified a substantial number of ERP correlates of AD/HD. Robust differences from healthy controls have been reported in early orienting, inhibitory control, and error-processing components. These data offer potential to improve our understanding of the specific brain dysfunction(s) which contribute to the disorder. The literature would benefit from a more rigorous approach to clinical group composition and consideration of age effects, as well as increased emphasis on replication and extension studies using exacting participant, task, and analysis parameters. Copyright © 2012 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Is Open Source the ERP Cure-All?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Panettieri, Joseph C.

2008-01-01

Conventional and hosted applications thrive, but open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) is coming on strong. In many ways, the evolution of the ERP market is littered with ironies. When Oracle began buying up customer relationship management (CRM) and ERP companies, some universities worried that they would be left with fewer choices and…

Attention that covers letters is necessary for the left-lateralization of an early print-tuned ERP in Japanese hiragana.

PubMed

Okumura, Yasuko; Kasai, Tetsuko; Murohashi, Harumitsu

2015-03-01

Extensive experience with reading develops expertise in acquiring information from print, and this is reflected in specific enhancement of the left-lateralized N170 component in event-related potentials. The N170 is generally considered to reflect visual/orthographic processing; while modulations of its left-lateralization related to phonological processes have also been indicated. However, in our previous study, N170-like response to Hiragana strings lacked left-lateralization when the stimuli were completely task-irrelevant in rapid-presentation sequences [Okumura et al. (2014). Early print-tuned ERP response with minimal involvement of linguistic processing in Japanese Hiragana strings. Neuroreport 25, 410-414]. This suggests that, despite the highly transparent character-to-syllable correspondence, the phonological mapping of Hiragana strings requires some kind of attention toward print. To verify this notion, the present study examined ERPs under the same experimental condition as in the previous study, except that the task required attention to a stimulus attribute (i.e., color). As a result, Hiragana words and nonwords elicited left-lateralized negative deflection in the occipito-temporal region during 130-170ms post-stimulus in comparison to symbol strings, but only when the print had a narrow intercharacter spacing. Moreover, we observed the enhancement of very early occipital ERP in response to words during 70-100ms. The present results suggest that visual attention plays a role in early print processing, which may contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie expert as well as impaired reading. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An Analysis of the Effects of Smartphone Push Notifications on Task Performance with regard to Smartphone Overuse Using ERP.

PubMed

Kim, Seul-Kee; Kim, So-Yeong; Kang, Hang-Bong

2016-01-01

Smartphones are used ubiquitously worldwide and are essential tools in modern society. However, smartphone overuse is an emerging social issue, and limited studies have objectively assessed this matter. The majority of previous studies have included surveys or behavioral observation studies. Since a previous study demonstrated an association between increased push notifications and smartphone overuse, we investigated the effects of push notifications on task performance. We detected changes in brainwaves generated by smartphone push notifications using the N200 and P300 components of event-related potential (ERP) to investigate both concentration and cognitive ability. ERP assessment indicated that, in both risk and nonrisk groups, the lowest N200 amplitude and the longest latency during task performance were found when push notifications were delivered. Compared to the nonrisk group, the risk group demonstrated lower P300 amplitudes and longer latencies. In addition, the risk group featured a higher rate of error in the Go-Nogo task, due to the negative influence of smartphone push notifications on performance in both risk and nonrisk groups. Furthermore, push notifications affected subsequent performance in the risk group.

Effects of cue frequency and repetition on prospective memory: an ERP investigation.

PubMed

Wilson, Jennifer; Cutmore, Tim R H; Wang, Ya; Chan, Raymond C K; Shum, David H K

2013-11-01

Prospective memory involves the formation and completion of delayed intentions and is essential for independent living. In this study (n = 33), event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to systematically evaluate the effects of PM cue frequency (10% versus 30%) and PM cue repetition (high versus low) on ERP modulations. PM cues elicited prospective positivity and frontal positivity but not N300, perhaps due to the semantic nature of the task. Results of this study revealed an interesting interaction between PM cue frequency and PM cue repetition for prospective positivity and frontal positivity, highlighting the importance of taking both factors into account when designing future studies. © 2013.

A Multi-Dimensional Functional Principal Components Analysis of EEG Data

PubMed Central

Hasenstab, Kyle; Scheffler, Aaron; Telesca, Donatello; Sugar, Catherine A.; Jeste, Shafali; DiStefano, Charlotte; Şentürk, Damla

2017-01-01

Summary The electroencephalography (EEG) data created in event-related potential (ERP) experiments have a complex high-dimensional structure. Each stimulus presentation, or trial, generates an ERP waveform which is an instance of functional data. The experiments are made up of sequences of multiple trials, resulting in longitudinal functional data and moreover, responses are recorded at multiple electrodes on the scalp, adding an electrode dimension. Traditional EEG analyses involve multiple simplifications of this structure to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, effectively collapsing the functional and longitudinal components by identifying key features of the ERPs and averaging them across trials. Motivated by an implicit learning paradigm used in autism research in which the functional, longitudinal and electrode components all have critical interpretations, we propose a multidimensional functional principal components analysis (MD-FPCA) technique which does not collapse any of the dimensions of the ERP data. The proposed decomposition is based on separation of the total variation into subject and subunit level variation which are further decomposed in a two-stage functional principal components analysis. The proposed methodology is shown to be useful for modeling longitudinal trends in the ERP functions, leading to novel insights into the learning patterns of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their typically developing peers as well as comparisons between the two groups. Finite sample properties of MD-FPCA are further studied via extensive simulations. PMID:28072468

The role of visual attention in multiple object tracking: evidence from ERPs.

PubMed

Doran, Matthew M; Hoffman, James E

2010-01-01

We examined the role of visual attention in the multiple object tracking (MOT) task by measuring the amplitude of the N1 component of the event-related potential (ERP) to probe flashes presented on targets, distractors, or empty background areas. We found evidence that visual attention enhances targets and suppresses distractors (Experiment 1 & 3). However, we also found that when tracking load was light (two targets and two distractors), accurate tracking could be carried out without any apparent contribution from the visual attention system (Experiment 2). Our results suggest that attentional selection during MOT is flexibly determined by task demands as well as tracking load and that visual attention may not always be necessary for accurate tracking.

Rapid modulation of spoken word recognition by visual primes.

PubMed

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J

2016-02-01

In a masked cross-modal priming experiment with ERP recordings, spoken Japanese words were primed with words written in one of the two syllabary scripts of Japanese. An early priming effect, peaking at around 200ms after onset of the spoken word target, was seen in left lateral electrode sites for Katakana primes, and later effects were seen for both Hiragana and Katakana primes on the N400 ERP component. The early effect is thought to reflect the efficiency with which words in Katakana script make contact with sublexical phonological representations involved in spoken language comprehension, due to the particular way this script is used by Japanese readers. This demonstrates fast-acting influences of visual primes on the processing of auditory target words, and suggests that briefly presented visual primes can influence sublexical processing of auditory target words. The later N400 priming effects, on the other hand, most likely reflect cross-modal influences on activity at the level of whole-word phonology and semantics.

Rapid modulation of spoken word recognition by visual primes

PubMed Central

Okano, Kana; Grainger, Jonathan; Holcomb, Phillip J.

2015-01-01

In a masked cross-modal priming experiment with ERP recordings, spoken Japanese words were primed with words written in one of the two syllabary scripts of Japanese. An early priming effect, peaking at around 200ms after onset of the spoken word target, was seen in left lateral electrode sites for Katakana primes, and later effects were seen for both Hiragana and Katakana primes on the N400 ERP component. The early effect is thought to reflect the efficiency with which words in Katakana script make contact with sublexical phonological representations involved in spoken language comprehension, due to the particular way this script is used by Japanese readers. This demonstrates fast-acting influences of visual primes on the processing of auditory target words, and suggests that briefly presented visual primes can influence sublexical processing of auditory target words. The later N400 priming effects, on the other hand, most likely reflect cross-modal influences on activity at the level of whole-word phonology and semantics. PMID:26516296

Crystal Structure of the ERp44-Peroxiredoxin 4 Complex Reveals the Molecular Mechanisms of Thiol-Mediated Protein Retention.

PubMed

Yang, Kai; Li, De-Feng; Wang, Xi'e; Liang, Jinzhao; Sitia, Roberto; Wang, Chih-Chen; Wang, Xi

2016-10-04

ERp44 controls the localization and transport of diverse proteins in the early secretory pathway. The mechanisms that allow client recognition and the source of the oxidative power for forming intermolecular disulfides are as yet unknown. Here we present the structure of ERp44 bound to a client, peroxiredoxin 4. Our data reveal that ERp44 binds the oxidized form of peroxiredoxin 4 via thiol-disulfide interchange reactions. The structure explains the redox-dependent recognition and characterizes the essential non-covalent interactions at the interface. The ERp44-Prx4 covalent complexes can be reduced by glutathione and protein disulfide isomerase family members in the ER, allowing the two components to recycle. This work provides insights into the mechanisms of thiol-mediated protein retention and indicates the key roles of ERp44 in this biochemical cycle to optimize oxidative folding and redox homeostasis. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

45 CFR 1155.400 - What are my responsibilities as a(n) NEA awarding official?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-10-01

... 45 Public Welfare 3 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false What are my responsibilities as a(n) NEA awarding official? 1155.400 Section 1155.400 Public Welfare Regulations Relating to Public Welfare (Continued... REQUIREMENTS FOR DRUG-FREE WORKPLACE (FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE) Responsibilities of NEA Awarding Officials § 1155...

ERPs reveal subliminal processing of fearful faces.

PubMed

Kiss, Monika; Eimer, Martin

2008-03-01

To investigate whether facial expression is processed in the absence of conscious awareness, ERPs were recorded in a task in which participants had to identify the expression of masked fearful and neutral target faces. On supraliminal trials (200 ms target duration), in which identification performance was high, a sustained positivity to fearful versus neutral target faces started 140 ms after target face onset. On subliminal trials (8 ms target duration), identification performance was at chance level, but ERPs still showed systematic fear-specific effects. An early positivity to fearful target faces was present but smaller than on supraliminal trials. A subsequent enhanced N2 to fearful faces was only present for subliminal trials. In contrast, a P3 enhancement to fearful faces was observed on supraliminal but not subliminal trials. Results demonstrate rapid emotional expression processing in the absence of awareness.