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Humans’ extraordinary ability to understand speech in noise relies on multiple processes that develop with age. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we characterize the underlying neuromaturational basis by quantifying how cortical oscillations in 144 participants (aged 5 to 27 years) track phrasal and syllabic structures in connected speech mixed with different types of noise. While the extraction of prosodic cues from clear speech was stable during development, its maintenance in a multi-talker background matured rapidly up to age 9 and was associated with speech comprehension. Furthermore, while the extraction of subtler information provided by syllables matured at age 9, its maintenance in noisy backgrounds progressively matured until adulthood. Altogether, these results highlight distinct behaviorally relevant maturational trajectories for the neuronal signatures of speech perception. In accordance with grain-size proposals, neuromaturational milestones are reached increasingly late for linguistic units of decreasing size, with further delays incurred by noise.TeaserThe neural signature of speech processing in silence and noise features multiple behaviorally relevant developmental milestones

Compositionality is a primary feature of language, but graphics can also create combinatorial meaning, like with items above faces (e.g., lightbulbs to mean inspiration). We posit that these “upfixes” (i.e., upwards affixes) involve a productive schema enabling both stored and novel face–upfix dyads. In two experiments, participants viewed either conventional (e.g., lightbulb) or unconventional (e.g., clover-leaves) upfixes with faces which either matched (e.g., lightbulb/smile) or mismatched (e.g., lightbulb/frown). In Experiment 1, matching dyads sponsored higher comprehensibility ratings and faster response times, modulated by conventionality. In Experiment 2, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed conventional upfixes, regardless of matching, evoked larger N250s, indicating perceptual expertise, but mismatching and unconventional dyads elicited larger semantic processing costs (N400) than conventional-matching dyads. Yet mismatches evoked a late negativity, suggesting congruent novel dyads remained construable compared with violations. These results support that combinatorial graphics involve a constrained productive schema, similar to the lexicon of language.

Available online 16 December 2021 We investigated how aging modulates lexico-semantic processes in the visual (seeing written items), auditory (hearing spoken items) and audiovisual (seeing written items while hearing congruent spoken items) modalities. Participants were young and older adults who performed a delayed lexical decision task (LDT) presented in blocks of visual, auditory, and audiovisual stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed differences between young and older adults despite older adults’ ability to identify words and pseudowords as accurately as young adults. The observed differences included more focalized lexico-semantic access in the N400 time window in older relative to young adults, stronger re-instantiation and/or more widespread activity of the lexicality effect at the time of responding, and stronger multimodal integration for older relative to young adults. Our results offer new insights into how functional neural differences in older adults can result in efficient access to lexico-semantic representations across the lifespan. This work was supported by a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship 702178 by the European Commission and a Juan de la Cierva Formacion Fellowship FJCI-2017-31782 from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities to RALZ, NWO VENI grant 275-89-027 to MB, MINECO grant PSI 2017-82563-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness to AGS, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant 502584 to BCA, and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018–2021 program.

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia Básica, Throughout the years many behavioral and electrophysiological studies have found reliable evidence of the syllable acting as an access unit for visual word recognition. Nevertheless, the fact that masked priming lexical decision tasks showed that syllable effects only occurred for words with a consonantvowel (CV) but not for with a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) first-syllable structure – the so-called syllable structure effect – has long been overlooked, even though it puts into question the importance of the syllable. In this work, we investigated the role of the syllable in the visual word recognition of European-Portuguese (EP) words with developing (third- and fifth- grade students) and adult expert readers, as well as the potential causes for the syllable structure effect. Thus, in Paper 1 we conducted a masked priming lexical decision task where the syllable congruency between pseudoword primes and CV and CVC words and pseudoword targets was manipulated giving rise to a syllable-congruent (e.g., ru.mis-RU.MOR [rumor]), syllable-incongruent (e.g., rum.pa-RU.MOR), and unrelated condition (e.g., ca.fas-RU.MOR), to investigate the emergence of syllable effects and of the syllable structure effect in EP. In Paper 2 we employed a similar manipulation to investigate syllable effects and the syllable structure effect with EP beginning and intermediate readers, though we have opted to use the sandwich masked priming combined with a go/no-go lexical decision task. In Paper 3, and Paper 4, two potential accounts for the syllable structure effect were investigated, the greater syllable complexity of CVC syllables, and the denser syllabic neighborhood of CV words, respectively. In Paper 3 we replicated the paradigm employed in Paper 1 but using longer prime durations of 67 and 82 ms instead of 50 ms, and in Paper 4 we have matched CV and CVC on their number of syllabic neighbors. Finally in Paper 5, we investigated the syllable structure effect using event-related potentials (ERPs), combined with a colorcongruency paradigm where CV, and two types of CVC words, those with a phonological (P) and orthographic (O) match CVCO+P+, and those with a P and O mismatch, CVCO+P- appeared segmented according to their syllable boundary (e.g., zebra [zebra]) or not (e.g., zebra). Our results suggest evidence of an early syllable activation for expert and intermediate readers. Furthermore, with developing readers syllable effects were found with CV and CVC words alike, and with expert readers, ERP data showed syllable effects for CV, CVCO+P+, and CVCO+P- words, and suggested that syllable activation occurs prior to lexical activation and is driven by orthographic information., Várias investigações comportamentais e eletrofisiológicos observaram evidências robustas quanto à importância da sílaba como unidade de acesso lexical no reconhecimento visual de palavras. No entanto, o facto de que em tarefas de decisão lexical com priming mascarado, efeitos silábicos foram observados para palavras com uma estrutura silábica de consoante-vogal (CV), mas não com estrutura silábica de consonante-vogal-consonante (CVC) – o chamado efeito de estrutura silábica – tem sido negligenciado ainda que ponha em causa a importância da sílaba. Neste trabalho, investigamos o papel da sílaba no reconhecimento visual de palavras do Português-Europeu (PE) com leitores em desenvolvimento (i.e., alunos do terceiro e quinto ano) e leitores proficientes, assim como as potenciais causas para o efeito de estrutura silábica. Deste modo, no Artigo 1 realizamos uma tarefa de decisão lexical com paradigma de priming mascarado onde a congruência entre primes pseudopalavras e targets palavras e pseudopalavras com estrutura CV e CVC, foi manipulada gerando uma condição de congruência (e.g., ru.mis-RU.MOR), uma de incongruência (e.g., rum.pa-RU.MOR), e uma nãorelacionada (e.g., ca.fas-RU.MOR). No Artigo 2 uma manipulação semelhante foi utilizada para estudar o efeito silábico e o efeito de estrutura silábica em leitores iniciantes e intermédios, usado o paradigma de priming de sandwich combinado com a tarefa go/no-go. Nos Artigos 3 e 4 duas explicações para o efeito de estrutura foram investigadas: a maior complexidade de sílabas CVC, e a vizinhança silábica mais densa de palavras CV respetivamente. No Artigo 3 replicamos o paradigma do Artigo 1, mas com durações de priming maiores de 67 e 82 ms em vez de 50 ms, e no Artigo 4, palavras CV e CVC foram controladas quanto ao número de vizinhos silábicos. Finalmente no Artigo 5 investigamos o efeito de estrutura silábica através do uso de potenciais de eventos relacionados (PER) combinado com um paradigma de congruência de cores onde palavras CV e dois tipos de CVC, aquelas com correspondência fonológica e ortográfica, CVCO+P+, e aquelas sem CVCO+P-, apareciam segmentadas de acordo com a sua sílaba (e.g., zebra), ou não (e.g., zebra). Os nossos resultados mostram evidência de uma ativação precoce da sílaba para leitores em desenvolvimento e proficientes. Foram também observados efeitos silábicos para palavras CV e CVC com leitores em desenvolvimento, e em leitores proficientes, os resultados dos PERs mostraram efeitos silábicos para targets CV, CVCO+P+, e CVCO+P-, sugerindo uma ativação silábica que precede a ativação lexical e que é conduzida pela ortografia., Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for the grant (reference PD/BD/128464/2017) given to me, and without which none of this would be possible, but also for the grant awarded to the project of Professor Ana Paula Soares (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-02821) which this thesis is a part of.

Cognitive abilities are impaired in patients with pituitary adenoma. However, studies on attention processing impairment in preoperative patients and attention processing recovery after transsphenoidal adenomectomy are lacking. The study aims to identify the electrophysiological change that relates to attention processing in pituitary patients before and after treatment. Twenty five preoperative pituitary patients and 25 follow-up postoperative patients were recruited. 27 healthy controls (HCs) were matched to the patients with age, gender, and education. Event-related potentials were used to investigate the attention processing in the preoperative patients, postoperative patients, and HCs. Across three groups, all emotional stimuli evoked P200 components. Compared with the HCs or postoperative patients, the amplitudes of P200 in the preoperative patients were higher. Moreover, The amplitudes of P200 decreased in the postoperative patients, which were similar to that in the HCs. The attention processing was improved after surgery, but no significant differences were detected between the postoperative patients and HCs. Abnormal hormone levels may be relevant to the factor that impair attention processing. Compared with that of the HCs and postoperative patients, the P200 component elicited by negative stimuli is higher in preoperative patients, which may illustrate compensatory activity after attention impairments. Furthermore, these data indicate that improvements in attention processing may be attributed to the amelioration of endocrine disorders. This study shows that the P200 component may be used to diagnose attention processing in preoperative pituitary patients and prove the improvement of attention processing in postoperative patients.

Self-administered computerized assessment has the potential to increase the reach of neuropsychological assessment. The present study reports the first split-half reliability estimates for a self-administered computerized variant of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), which is considered as a gold standard for the neuropsychological assessment of executive functions. We analyzed data from a large sample of young volunteers (N = 375). Split-half reliability estimates for perseveration errors, set-loss errors, and inference errors were all above 0.90. Split-half reliability estimates for response time measures on switch and repeat trials exceeded 0.95. Our results indicated sufficient split-half reliability for a self-administered computerized WCST, paving the way for an advanced digital assessment of executive functions. We discuss potential effects of test formats, administration variants, and sample characteristics on split-half reliability. ispartof: BRAIN SCIENCES vol:11 issue:5 ispartof: location:Switzerland status: published

Article first published online: January 13, 2020 Humans quickly adapt to variations in the speech signal. Adaptation may surface as recalibration, a learning effect driven by error-minimisation between a visual face and an ambiguous auditory speech signal, or as selective adaptation, a contrastive aftereffect driven by the acoustic clarity of the sound. Here, we examined whether these aftereffects occur for vowel identity and voice gender. Participants were exposed to male, female, or androgynous tokens of speakers pronouncing /e/, /ø/, (embedded in words with a consonant-vowel-consonant structure), or an ambiguous vowel halfway between /e/ and /ø/ dubbed onto the video of a male or female speaker pronouncing /e/ or /ø/. For both voice gender and vowel identity, we found assimilative aftereffects after exposure to auditory ambiguous adapter sounds, and contrastive aftereffects after exposure to auditory clear adapter sounds. This demonstrates that similar principles for adaptation in these dimensions are at play. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Gravitation Grant 024.001.006 of the Language in Interaction Consortium from Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. The third author was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO: VENI Grant 275-89-027).

Lip-reading is crucial for understanding speech in challenging conditions. But how the brain extracts meaning from--silent--visual speech is still under debate. Lip-reading in silence activates the auditory cortices, but it is not known whether such activation reflects immediate synthesis of the corresponding auditory stimulus or imagery of unrelated sounds.To disentangle these possibilities, we used magnetoencephalography to evaluate how cortical activity in 28 healthy adults humans (17 females) entrained to the auditory speech envelope and lip movements (mouth opening) when listening to a spoken story without visual input (audio-only), and when seeing a silent video of a speaker articulating another story (video-only).In video-only, auditory cortical activity entrained to the absent auditory signal at frequencies below 1 Hz more than to the seen lip movements. This entrainment process was characterized by an auditory-speech-to-brain delay of ∼70 ms in the left hemisphere, compared to ∼20 ms in audio-only Entrainment to mouth opening was found in the right angular gyrus at below 1 Hz, and in early visual cortices at 1-8 Hz.These findings demonstrate that the brain can use a silent lip-read signal to synthesize a coarse-grained auditory speech representation in early auditory cortices. Our data indicate the following underlying oscillatory mechanism: Seeing lip movements first modulates neuronal activity in early visual cortices at frequencies that match articulatory lip movements; the right angular gyrus then extracts slower features of lip movements, mapping them onto the corresponding speech sound features; this information is fed to auditory cortices, most likely facilitating speech parsing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTLip-reading consists in decoding speech based on visual information derived from observation of a speaker's articulatory facial gestures. Lip reading is known to improve auditory speech understanding, especially when speech is degraded. Interestingly, lip-reading in silence still activates the auditory cortices, even when participants do not know what the absent auditory signal should be. However, it was uncertain what such activation reflected. Here, using magnetoencephalographic recordings, we demonstrate it reflects fast synthesis of the auditory stimulus rather than mental imagery of unrelated--speech or non-speech--sounds. Our results also shed light on the oscillatory dynamics underlying lip-reading., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Working memory, the system that maintains a limited set of representations for immediate use in cognition, is a central part of human cognition. Three processes have recently been proposed to govern information storage in working memory: Consolidation, refreshing and removal. Here we discuss in detail the theoretical construct of working-memory consolidation, a process critical to the creation of a stable working memory representation. We present a brief overview of the research that indicated the need for a construct such as working memory consolidation and the subsequent research that has helped to define the parameters of the construct. We then move on to explicitly state the points of agreement as to what processes are involved in working-memory consolidation.

Published: 22 March 2019. Although the default state of the world is that we see and hear other people talking, there is evidence that seeing and hearing ourselves rather than someone else may lead to visual (i.e., lip-read) or auditory “self” advantages. We assessed whether there is a “self” advantage for phonetic recalibration (a lip-read driven cross-modal learning effect) and selective adaptation (a contrastive effect in the opposite direction of recalibration). We observed both aftereffects as well as an on-line effect of lip-read information on auditory perception (i.e., immediate capture), but there was no evidence for a “self” advantage in any of the tasks (as additionally supported by Bayesian statistics). These findings strengthen the emerging notion that recalibration reflects a general learning mechanism, and bolster the argument that adaptation depends on rather low-level auditory/acoustic features of the speech signal. This work was supported by the Severo Ochoa program grant SEV-2015-049 awarded to the BCBL. MB and MP were supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, grant PSI2014-51874-P), and MB was also supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, VENI grant 275-89-027).

Available online 1 September 2018. There is considerable behavioral evidence that morphologically complex words such as ‘tax-able’ and ‘kiss-es’ are processed and represented combinatorially. In other words, they are decomposed into their constituents ‘tax’ and ‘-able’ during comprehension (reading or listening), and producing them might also involve on–the–spot combination of these constituents (especially for inflections). However, despite increasing amount of neurocognitive research, the neural mechanisms underlying these processes are still not fully understood. The purpose of this critical review is to offer a comprehensive overview on the state-of-the-art of the research on the neural mechanisms of morphological processing. In order to take into account all types of complex words, we include findings on inflected, derived, and compound words presented both visually and aurally. More specifically, we cover a wide range of electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG and MEG, respectively) as well as structural/functional magnetic resonance imaging (s/fMRI) studies that focus on morphological processing. We present the findings with respect to the temporal course and localization of morphologically complex word processing. We summarize the observed findings, their interpretations with respect to current psycholinguistic models, and discuss methodological approaches as well as their possible limitations. This study was supported by Kone Foundation and Helsinki University Research Grants to Alina Leminen, by the Volkswagen Foundation, Grant FP 561/11 to Eva Smolka, PSI2015- 65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government (Jon Andoni Du~nabeitia).

Speech perception is influenced by vision through a process of audiovisual integration. This is demonstrated by the McGurk illusion where visual speech (for example /ga/) dubbed with incongruent auditory speech (such as /ba/) leads to a modified auditory percept (/da/). Recent studies have indicated that perception of the incongruent speech stimuli used in McGurk paradigms involves mechanisms of both general and audiovisual speech specific mismatch processing and that general mismatch processing modulates induced theta-band (4-8 Hz) oscillations. Here, we investigated whether the theta modulation merely reflects mismatch processing or, alternatively, audiovisual integration of speech. We used electroencephalographic recordings from two previously published studies using audiovisual sine-wave speech (SWS), a spectrally degraded speech signal sounding nonsensical to naive perceivers but perceived as speech by informed subjects. Earlier studies have shown that informed, but not naive subjects integrate SWS phonetically with visual speech. In an N1/P2 event-related potential paradigm, we found a significant difference in theta-band activity between informed and naive perceivers of audiovisual speech, suggesting that audiovisual integration modulates induced theta-band oscillations. In a McGurk mismatch negativity paradigm (MMN) where infrequent McGurk stimuli were embedded in a sequence of frequent audio-visually congruent stimuli we found no difference between congruent and McGurk stimuli. The infrequent stimuli in this paradigm are violating both the general prediction of stimulus content, and that of audiovisual congruence. Hence, we found no support for the hypothesis that audiovisual mismatch modulates induced theta-band oscillations. We also did not find any effects of audiovisual integration in the MMN paradigm, possibly due to the experimental design.

We investigated the role of executive control processes in the activation of manual affordances in two experiments combining stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) and dual-task paradigms. We registered an inverse SRC effect in the presence of a parallel backward-counting task in Experiment 1, and a cancellation of the SRC effect in Experiment 2 when a parallel Stroop-like task was used. We interpret our data as supporting a self-inhibition account of the affordance activation control. Accordingly, the role of executive processes is to prevent self-inhibition in supraliminal conditions: when cognitive resources are depleted by a parallel task, the self-inhibition mechanism becomes active and irrelevantly potentiated affordances are inhibited, leading to the emergence of an inverse SRC effect. In addition, the difference between data patterns observed in the two experiments suggests that the exact roles of the executive processes involved during the activation of affordances may differ. The results suggest a mechanism for action-related activation monitoring based on a flexible control over automatically potentiated actions. The paper discusses the proposed mechanism in detail and outlines further research directions.

Working memory, the system that maintains a limited set of representations for immediate use in cognition, is a central part of human cognition. Three processes have recently been proposed to govern information storage in working memory: Consolidation, refreshing and removal. Here we discuss in detail the theoretical construct of working-memory consolidation, a process critical to the creation of a stable working memory representation. We present a brief overview of the research that indicated the need for a construct such as working memory consolidation and the subsequent research that has helped to define the parameters of the construct. We then move on to explicitly state the points of agreement as to what processes are involved in working-memory consolidation.

Seeing articulatory gestures enhances speech perception. Perception of auditory speech can even be changed by incongruent visual gestures, which is known as the McGurk effect (e.g., dubbing a voice saying /mi/ onto a face articulating /ni/, observers often hear /ni/). In children, the McGurk effect is weaker than in adults, but no previous knowledge exists about the neural-level correlates of the McGurk effect in school-age children. Using brain event-related potentials, we investigated change detection responses to congruent and incongruent audiovisual speech in school-age children and adults. We used an oddball paradigm with a congruent audiovisual /mi/ as the standard stimulus and a congruent audiovisual /ni/ or McGurk A/mi/V/ni/ as the deviant stimulus. In adults, a similar change detection response was elicited by both deviant stimuli. In children, change detection responses differed between the congruent and the McGurk stimulus. This reflects a maturational difference in the influence of visual stimuli on auditory processing.

Cognitive flexibility has been studied in two separate research traditions. Neuropsychologists typically rely on rather complex assessment tools such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). In contrast, task-switching paradigms are used in experimental psychology to obtain more specific measures of cognitive flexibility. We aim to contribute to the integration of these research traditions by examining the role of the key factor that differs between the WCST and experimental task-switching paradigms: rule uncertainty. In two experimental studies, we manipulated the degree of rule uncertainty after rule switches in a computerized version of the WCST. Across a variety of task parameters, reducing rule uncertainty consistently impaired the speed and accuracy of responses when the rule designated to be more likely turned out to be incorrect. Other performance measures such as the number of perseverative errors were not significantly affected by rule uncertainty. We conclude that a fine-grained analysis of WCST performance can dissociate behavioural indicators that are affected vs. unaffected by rule uncertainty. By this means, it is possible to integrate WCST results and findings obtained from task-switching paradigms that do not involve rule uncertainty. ispartof: ACTA PSYCHOLOGICA vol:190 pages:53-64 ispartof: location:Netherlands status: published

Item does not contain fulltext Bilinguals often switch languages as a function of the language background of their addressee. The control mechanisms supporting bilinguals' ability to select the contextually appropriate language are heavily debated. Here we present four experiments in which unbalanced bilinguals named pictures in their first language Dutch and their second language English in mixed and blocked contexts. Immersive virtual reality technology was used to increase the ecological validity of the cued language-switching paradigm. Behaviorally, we consistently observed symmetrical switch costs, reversed language dominance, and asymmetrical mixing costs. These findings indicate that unbalanced bilinguals apply sustained inhibition to their dominant L1 in mixed language settings. Consequent enhanced processing costs for the L1 in a mixed versus a blocked context were reflected by a sustained positive component in event-related potentials. Methodologically, the use of virtual reality opens up a wide range of possibilities to study language and communication in bilingual and other communicative settings. 27 p.

The cognitive view on deception proposes that lying comes with a cognitive cost. This view is supported by the finding that lying typically takes longer than truth telling. Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a means to unravel the cognitive processes underlying this cost. Using a mock-crime design, the current study (n = 20) investigated the effects of deception on the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV), the Lateralized Readiness Potential (LRP), the Correct Response Negativity (CRN), and the stimulus-locked N200 and P300 components. In line with previous research, lying resulted in more errors, longer reaction times (RTs) and longer RT standard deviations compared to truthful responses. A marginally significant effect suggested a stronger CNV for the anticipation of lying compared to the anticipation of truth telling. There were no significant deception effects on the stimulus- and the response-locked LRPs. Unexpectedly, we found a significantly larger CRN for truth telling compared to lying. Additional analyses revealed an enhanced N200 and a decreased P300 for lying compared to truth telling. Our results support the cognitive load hypothesis for lying, yet are mixed regarding the response conflict hypothesis. Results are discussed with regard to the specific characteristics of our design and their theoretical and applied implications.

Leber inherited optic neuropathy (LHON) is characterized by subacute bilateral loss of central vision due to dysfunction and loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). Comprehensive visual electrophysiological investigations (including pattern reversal visual evoked potentials, pattern electroretinography and the photopic negative response) performed on 13 patients with acute and chronic LHON indicate early impairment of RGC cell body function and severe axonal dysfunction. Temporal, spatial and chromatic psychophysical tests performed on 7 patients with acute LHON and 4 patients with chronic LHON suggest severe involvement or loss of the midget, parasol and bistratified RGCs associated with all three principal visual pathways.

Visual search and oddball paradigms were combined to investigate memory for to-be-ignored color changes in a group of 12 healthy participants. The onset of unexpected color change of an irrelevant stimulus evoked two reliable ERP effects: a component of the event-related potential (ERP), similar to the visual mismatch negativity response (vMMN), with a latency of 120-160 ms and a posterior distribution over the left hemisphere and Late Fronto-Central Negativity (LFCN) with a latency of 320-400 ms, apparent at fronto-central electrodes and some posterior sites. Color change of that irrelevant stimulus also slowed identification of a visual target, indicating distraction. The amplitude of this color-change vMMN, but not LFCN, indexed this distraction effect. That is, electrophysiological and behavioral measures were correlated. The interval between visual scenes approximated 1 s (611-1629 ms), indicating that the brain's sensory memory for the color of the preceding visual scenes must persist for at least 600 ms. Therefore, in the case of the neural code for color, durable memory representations are formed in an obligatory manner. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spoken word recognition and production require fast transformations between acoustic, phonological, and conceptual neural representations. Bilinguals perform these transformations in native and non-native languages, deriving unified semantic concepts from equivalent, but acoustically different words. Here we exploit this capacity of bilinguals to investigate input invariant semantic representations in the brain. We acquired EEG data while Dutch subjects, highly proficient in English listened to four monosyllabic and acoustically distinct animal words in both languages (e.g., "paard"-"horse"). Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was applied to identify EEG response patterns that discriminate between individual words within one language (within-language discrimination) and generalize meaning across two languages (across-language generalization). Furthermore, employing two EEG feature selection approaches, we assessed the contribution of temporal and oscillatory EEG features to our classification results. MVPA revealed that within-language discrimination was possible in a broad time-window (~50-620 ms) after word onset probably reflecting acoustic-phonetic and semantic-conceptual differences between the words. Most interestingly, significant across-language generalization was possible around 550-600 ms, suggesting the activation of common semantic-conceptual representations from the Dutch and English nouns. Both types of classification, showed a strong contribution of oscillations below 12 Hz, indicating the importance of low frequency oscillations in the neural representation of individual words and concepts. This study demonstrates the feasibility of MVPA to decode individual spoken words from EEG responses and to assess the spectro-temporal dynamics of their language invariant semantic-conceptual representations. We discuss how this method and results could be relevant to track the neural mechanisms underlying conceptual encoding in comprehension and production.