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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.

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.

In traditional theories of language comprehension, syntactic and semantic processing are inextricably linked. This assumption has been challenged by the 'Semantic: Illusion Effect' found in studies using Event Related brain Potentials. Semantically anomalous sentences did not produce the expected increase in N400 amplitude but rather one in F'600 amplitude. To explain these findings, complex models have been devised in which an independent semantic processing stream can arrive at a sentence interpretation that may differ from the interpretation prescribed by the syntactic structure of the. sentence. We review five such multi-stream models and argue that they do not account for the full range of relevant results because they assume that the amplitude of the N400 indexes some form of semantic integration. Based on recent evidence we argue that N400 amplitude might reflect the retrieval of lexical information from memory. On this view, the absence of an N400-effect in Semantic Illusion sentences can be explained in terms cif priming. Furthermore, we suggest that semantic integration, which has previously been linked to the N400 component, might be reflected in the P600 instead. When combined, these functional interpretations result in a single-stream account of language processing that can explain all of the Semantic Illusion data. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We investigated whether it is possible to control the temporal window of attention used to rapidly integrate visual information. To study the underlying neural mechanisms, we recorded ERPs in an attentional blink task, known to elicit Lag-1 sparing. Lag-1 sparing fosters joint integration of the two targets, evidenced by increased order errors. Short versus long integration windows were induced by showing participants mostly fast or slow stimuli. Participants expecting slow speed used a longer integration window, increasing joint integration. Difference waves showed an early (200 ms post-T2) negative and a late positive modulation (390 ms) in the fast group, but not in the slow group. The modulations suggest the creation of a separate event for T2, which is not needed in the slow group, where targets were often jointly integrated. This suggests that attention can be guided by global expectations of presentation speed within tens of milliseconds.

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.

Contains fulltext : 55621.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) This study examined auditory processing in 2-month-old infants at genetic risk for dyslexia and in controls. Manipulated natural speech stimuli (/bAk/ and /dAk/), at either side of the phoneme boundary, were presented to these infants and their automatic cortical deviance responses were recorded. Control infants showed two distinct mismatch responses, thus extending similar findings reported with kindergartners in terms of topographical distribution and cortical sources. The absence of such mismatch responses in the infants at risk supports the hypothesis of basic auditory (temporal) processing impairments in the disorder. The results suggest that these early signs of deficient auditory processing may point to problematic categorical perception at a later age. 6 p.

The ERP experiment reported here addresses some outstanding questions regarding word processing in sentential contexts: (1) Does only the 'message-level' representation (the representation of sentence meaning combining lexico-semantic and syntactic constraints) affect the processing of the incoming word [J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 20 (1994) 92]? (2) Is lexically specified semantic relatedness between multiple words the primary factor instead [J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 15 (1989) 791]? (3) Alternatively, do word and sentence level information interact during sentence comprehension? Volunteers read sentences (e.g. Dutch sentences resembling The javelin was by the athletes...) in which the (passive) syntactic structure and the semantic content of the lexical items together created a strong expectation of a specific final word (e.g., thrown), but also sentences in which the syntactic structure was changed from passive to active (e.g. Dutch sentences resembling The javelin has the athletes...), which altered the message level constraint substantially and strongly reduced. the expectation of any particular completion. Half of the sentences ended in a final word with a good lexico-semantic fit relative to the preceding content words (e.g. thrown, fitting well with the preceding javelin and athletes). This creates very plausible sentences in the strong constraint context but semantically anomalous ones in the weakly constraining context (e.g., The javelin has the athletes thrown). In the other half the final word had a poor lexico-semantic fit (e.g., summarized that does not fit at all with javelin and athletes). Good lexico-semantic fit endings showed no difference in N400 amplitude in the strong and weak message-level constraint sentences, despite the fact that the latter were semantically anomalous. This result suggests that lexico-semantic fit can be more important for word processing than the meaning of the sentence as determined by the syntactic structure, at least initially. These conditions did differ, however, in the region of the P600 where the anomalous weak constraint version was much more positive, a pattern usually seen with ungrammatical sentences. The processing of poor lexicosemantic fit words showed a quite different pattern; in both strong and weak constraint sentences they elicited a substantial N400 effect, but N400-amplitude was significantly more negative following strong constraint contexts, even though both sentence contexts were equivalently anomalous. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for the importance of both message-level and lexico-semantic information during sentence comprehension. The implications for theories of sentence interpretation are discussed and an extension of the message-based hypothesis will be proposed. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The event-related potential (ERP) effects of visual spatial attention and letter target detection for stimuli presented against a (nonisoluminant) dark background or against an isoluminant grey background were investigated. The goal was to study how the perceptual variable of luminance would influence early ERP reflections of selective attention. Such effects could further substantiate the claim that selective attention operates at the level of early perceptual processing and could provide evidence regarding the role of different visual routes in selective attention. Isoluminance increased the peak latency of the early ERP deflections (NP80, P1, and N1) by 40-50 ms. The ERP effects of spatial attention, consisting of P1 and N1 amplitude enhancements, were similarly delayed by isoluminance, supporting the idea that early selective processing is strongly dependent on bottom-up perceptual processing. P300 latency and reaction time were delayed by 70-75 ms, the additional delay probably reflecting that isoluminance affected decision processes in addition to perceptual processes. Isoluminance left the scalp topographies of the early ERP deflections largely unaffected, although a slight shift of the N1 topography in the isoluminant condition toward more inferior lateral posterior regions of the scalp could have reflected an increased contribution from ventral (occipitotemporal) brain areas. Relative to nontarget letters, targets presented at both attended and unattended spatial positions elicited an early contralaterally dominant lateral occipitotemporal negativity (N2pc). This ERP component is proposed to reflect an early, partly automatic process of template matching, consistent with indications from spatiotemporal dipole modelling that the N2pc was generated in inferior occipitotemporal brain regions.

We investigated the neural correlates induced by prenatal exposure to melodies using brains' event-related potentials (ERPs). During the last trimester of pregnancy, the mothers in the learning group played the ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ -melody 5 times per week. After birth and again at the age of 4 months, we played the infants a modified melody in which some of the notes were changed while ERPs to unchanged and changed notes were recorded. The ERPs were also recorded from a control group, who received no prenatal stimulation. Both at birth and at the age of 4 months, infants in the learning group had stronger ERPs to the unchanged notes than the control group. Furthermore, the ERP amplitudes to the changed and unchanged notes at birth were correlated with the amount of prenatal exposure. Our results show that extensive prenatal exposure to a melody induces neural representations that last for several months.

The ability to extract word forms from continuous speech is a prerequisite for constructing a vocabulary and emerges in the first year of life. Electrophysiological (ERP) studies of speech segmentation by 9- to 12-month-old listeners in several languages have found a left-localized negativity linked to word onset as a marker of word detection. We report an ERP study showing significant evidence of speech segmentation in Dutch-learning 7-month-olds. In contrast to the left-localized negative effect reported with older infants, the observed overall mean effect had a positive polarity. Inspection of individual results revealed two participant sub-groups: a majority showing a positive-going response, and a minority showing the left negativity observed in older age groups. We retested participants at age three, on vocabulary comprehension and word and sentence production. On every test, children who at 7 months had shown the negativity associated with segmentation of words from speech outperformed those who had produced positive-going brain responses to the same input. The earlier that infants show the left-localized brain responses typically indicating detection of words in speech, the better their early childhood language skills. - See more at: http://www.frontiersin.org/Language_Sciences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00025/abstract#sthash.uNXBLdzM.dpuf

The ability to extract word forms from continuous speech is a prerequisite for constructing a vocabulary and emerges in the first year of life. Electrophysiological (ERR) studies of speech segmentation by 9- to 12-month-old listeners in several languages have found a left-localized negativity linked to word onset as a marker of word detection. We report an ERR study showing significant evidence of speech segmentation in Dutch-learning 7-month-olds. In contrast to the left-localized negative effect reported with older infants, the observed overall mean effect had a positive polarity. Inspection of individual results revealed two participant sub-groups: a majority showing a positive-going response, and a minority showing the left negativity observed in older age groups. We retested participants at age three, on vocabulary comprehension and word and sentence production. On every test, children who at 7 months had shown the negativity associated with segmentation of words from speech outperformed those who had produced positive-going brain responses to the same input. The earlier that infants show the left-localized brain responses typically indicating detection of words in speech, the better their early childhood language skills.

Converging electrophysiological and brain-imaging results show that sensory processing in V1 can be modulated by attention. In this study, we tested the prediction that this early filtering effect depends on the current affective state of the participant. We recorded visual evoked potentials (VEPs) to visual peripheral distractors while participants performed a demanding task at fixation, whose perceptual load was manipulated in a parametric fashion. Crucially, levels of negative affect were either increased or decreased independently of changes in perceptual load. Concurrent psychophysiological measurements and self-report scales confirmed that changes in emotional state were effective. In the control condition, ERP results showed that the C1 component generated in response to the exact same peripheral distractors systematically varied in amplitude with the amount of perceptual load imposed at fixation, being larger when perceptual load decreased. However, this early modulatory effect in V1 was disrupted when participants transiently experienced increased state anxiety, resulting in a decreased C1 amplitude even though task load at fixation remained low. These results suggest that early bottom-up processing in V1 is not only influenced by the amount of attention resources available, but also by the current internal state of the participant.

The present cognitive paper gives an overview about current topics in neurosciences. Following Marr's (1982) conception, a computational analysis of visual selective processing is presented. Principals of modern neural imaging techniques are discussed. Event related brain potentials and event related magnetic fields are a suitable method the identification of different subsystems involved in cerebral information processing.

Increasing evidence suggests that working memory and perceptual processes are dynamically interrelated due to modulating activity in overlapping brain networks. However, the direct influence of working memory on the spatio-temporal brain dynamics of behaviorally relevant intervening information remains unclear. To investigate this issue, subjects performed a visual proximity grid perception task under three different visual-spatial working memory (VSWM) load conditions. VSWM load was manipulated by asking subjects to memorize the spatial locations of 6 or 3 disks. The grid was always presented between the encoding and recognition of the disk pattern. As a baseline condition, grid stimuli were presented without a VSWM context. VSWM load altered both perceptual performance and neural networks active during intervening grid encoding. Participants performed faster and more accurately on a challenging perceptual task under high VSWM load as compared to the low load and the baseline condition. Visual evoked potential (VEP) analyses identified changes in the configuration of the underlying sources in one particular period occurring 160-190 ms post-stimulus onset. Source analyses further showed an occipito-parietal down-regulation concurrent to the increased involvement of temporal and frontal resources in the high VSWM context. Together, these data suggest that cognitive control mechanisms supporting working memory may selectively enhance concurrent visual processing related to an independent goal. More broadly, our findings are in line with theoretical models implicating the engagement of frontal regions in synchronizing and optimizing mnemonic and perceptual resources towards multiple goals.

Name agreement is the extent to which different people agree on a name for a particular picture. Previous studies have found that it takes longer to name low name agreement pictures than high name agreement pictures. To examine the effect of name agreement in the online process of picture naming, we compared event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded whilst 19 healthy, native English speakers silently named pictures which had either high or low name agreement. A series of ERP components was examined: P1 approximately 120 ms from picture onset, N1 around 170 ms, P2 around 220 ms, N2 around 290 ms, and P3 around 400 ms. Additionally, a late time window from 800 to 900 ms was considered. Name agreement had an early effect, starting at P1 and possibly resulting from uncertainty of picture identity, and continuing into N2, possibly resulting from alternative names for pictures. These results support the idea that name agreement affects two consecutive processes: first, object recognition, and second, lexical selection and/or phonological encoding. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Dyslexics have problems with categorization of speech sounds, in particular when rapid temporal processing is involved such as in formant transitions of stop-consonants. Infants are already sensitive to such auditory features, but here we show that precursors of impaired categorization are already present in the brain responses of two-month-old infants at familial risk for dyslexia. Natural speech stimuli (/bAk/ and /dAk/), at either side of the phoneme boundary, induced multiple mismatch responses in control infants tinder pre-attentive and pre-cognitive conditions. Infants at-risk showed an attenuated early mismatch response and an absent late one, in addition to diminished cortical activity in the left hemisphere. These results are consistent with a temporal processing deficit in the infants at risk and may point to an early precursor of the disorder. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The event-related potential (ERP) effects of visual spatial attention and letter target detection for stimuli presented against a (nonisoluminant) dark background or against an isoluminant grey background were investigated. The goal was to study how the perceptual variable of luminance would influence early ERP reflections of selective attention. Such effects could further substantiate the claim that selective attention operates at the level of early perceptual processing and could provide evidence regarding the role of different visual routes in selective attention. Isoluminance increased the peak latency of the early ERP deflections (NP80, P1, and N1) by 40-50 ms. The ERP effects of spatial attention, consisting of P1 and N1 amplitude enhancements, were similarly delayed by isoluminance, supporting the idea that early selective processing is strongly dependent on bottom-up perceptual processing. P300 latency and reaction time were delayed by 70-75 ms, the additional delay probably reflecting that isoluminance affected decision processes in addition to perceptual processes. Isoluminance left the scalp topographies of the early ERP deflections largely unaffected, although a slight shift of the N1 topography in the isoluminant condition toward more inferior lateral posterior regions of the scalp could have reflected an increased contribution from ventral (occipitotemporal) brain areas. Relative to nontarget letters, targets presented at both attended and unattended spatial positions elicited an early contralaterally dominant lateral occipitotemporal negativity (N2pc). This ERP component is proposed to reflect an early, partly automatic process of template matching, consistent with indications from spatiotemporal dipole modelling that the N2pc was generated in inferior occipitotemporal brain regions.

The present cognitive paper gives an overview about current topics in neurosciences. Following Marr's (1982) conception, a computational analysis of visual selective processing is presented. Principals of modern neural imaging techniques are discussed. Event related brain potentials and event related magnetic fields are a suitable method the identification of different subsystems involved in cerebral information processing.