Search Results

Event-related brain potentials: an introduction

Michael G. H. Coles and Michael D. Rugg

in Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-related Brain Potentials and Cognition

This introductory chapter focuses on the methodology of event-related potential (ERP) research. ERP recording and analysis, and ERP components and their measurement are discussed.

Event-related potentials and language comprehension

Lee Osterhout and Phillip J. Holcomb

in Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-related Brain Potentials and Cognition

This chapter reviews existing literature on event-related potential (ERP). The first section reviews ERP studies aimed at investigating word-level processes (recognizing isolated words and words in ... More

This chapter reviews existing literature on event-related potential (ERP). The first section reviews ERP studies aimed at investigating word-level processes (recognizing isolated words and words in single-word contexts). The second section focuses on sentence-level processes (recognizing words in sentence contexts and computing syntactic structure).Less

Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Human Comprehension

Tatiana Sitnikova, Phillip J. Holcomb, and Gina R. Kuperberg

in Understanding Events: From Perception to Action

This chapter begins with a discussion of evidence for distinctions between two semantic comprehension systems in the language domain: a system that maps the perceived information on graded semantic ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of evidence for distinctions between two semantic comprehension systems in the language domain: a system that maps the perceived information on graded semantic representations and a system that utilizes particular semantic requirements of verbs. It then reviews similar research using static and motion pictures. It argues that the two mechanisms of language comprehension might be analogous to the systems that use graded semantic representations and action-based requirements to make sense of the visual world. The experiments that are reviewed in this chapter examine questions of both how comprehenders understand relationships between the elements within individual events and how they understand the relationships between events. Experiments that have used event-related potentials (ERPs) are also highlighted.Less

The Sources and Temporal Dynamics of Scalp Electric Fields

Christoph M. Michel and Daniel Brandeis

in Simultaneous EEG and fMRI: Recording, Analysis, and Application

This chapter focuses on the spatiotemporal aspects of the electroencephalography (EEG), and discusses the most important findings concerning the oscillations and the temporal dynamics of electrical ... More

This chapter focuses on the spatiotemporal aspects of the electroencephalography (EEG), and discusses the most important findings concerning the oscillations and the temporal dynamics of electrical activity. Topics discussed include neuronal generators, sources and spatial scales of EEG and event-related potential (ERP) activity, spatial field distributions, oscillations in brain networks, functional microstates of the brain, and EEG source imaging.Less

Mental chronometry and the study of human information processing

Michael G. H. Coles, Henderikus G. O. M. Smid, Marten K. Scheffers, and Leun J. Otten

in Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-related Brain Potentials and Cognition

This chapter examines the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) in the study of human information processing. Topics discussed include mental chronometry, chronopsychophysiology, the locus of ... More

This chapter examines the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) in the study of human information processing. Topics discussed include mental chronometry, chronopsychophysiology, the locus of experimental effects, and the structure and function of the information processing system.Less

ERP studies of memory *

Michael D. Rugg

in Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-related Brain Potentials and Cognition

This chapter reviews event-related potential (ERP) studies of human memory. Topics covered include the relationship between ERPs and cognitive processing, studies of memory coding, and studies of ... More

This chapter reviews event-related potential (ERP) studies of human memory. Topics covered include the relationship between ERPs and cognitive processing, studies of memory coding, and studies of memory retrieval (repetition effects and recognition memory).Less

The Relationship Between Brain Activity, Cognitive Performance, and Aging: The Case of Memory

Michael D. Rugg and Alexa M. Morcom

in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging: Linking cognitive and cerebral aging

This chapter discusses some of the methodological issues that arise when using noninvasive measures of neural activity (specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] and event-related ... More

This chapter discusses some of the methodological issues that arise when using noninvasive measures of neural activity (specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] and event-related potentials [ERPs]). It focuses on how studies can be designed to identify age-related differences in brain activity associated with memory processes free from the influence of confounding variables that, by virtue of their correlation with age, might masquerade as differences inherent to the aging process. Whereas some of these variables are relevant to fMRI and ERP studies of aging in any cognitive domain, others are more specific to studies of episodic memory.Less

Electrophysiological and Optical Measures of Cognitive Aging

Monica Fabiani and Gabriele Gratton

in Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging: Linking cognitive and cerebral aging

This chapter reviews optical brain imaging and electrophysiology in the context of other available methodologies as they apply to aging research. Both methods emphasize the temporal aspects of the ... More

This chapter reviews optical brain imaging and electrophysiology in the context of other available methodologies as they apply to aging research. Both methods emphasize the temporal aspects of the brain phenomena underlying cognition and thus allow for a closer parallel with cognitive studies using a mental chronometry approach to the study of aging. However, these two methods differ in the amount of localization information they provide, with electrophysiological methods yielding a coarser spatial description of brain activity and optical imaging meshing temporal and spatial information at a finer level. The spatial resolution of optical imaging may be close to that reached with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or positron emission tomography (PET), especially when data from a number of subjects are combined, which leads to a loss of resolution for all techniques.Less

Detection of Concealed Stored Memories with Psychophysiological and Neuroimaging Methods

J. Peter Rosenfeld, Gershon Ben-Shakhar, and Giorgio Ganis

in Memory and Law

This chapter describes the use of three types of physiological measures used to detect concealed memories. These measures may be utilized by legal authorities to detect involvement in criminal and ... More

This chapter describes the use of three types of physiological measures used to detect concealed memories. These measures may be utilized by legal authorities to detect involvement in criminal and terror activities and malingered cognitive deficits. The first set of measures records activities of the autonomic nervous system such as heart rate, skin conductance, and blood pressure as indexes of autonomic arousal accompanying confrontation with crime-related items. The second and third sets of measures record brain activity associated with recognition of intentionally concealed information. The second utilizes the P300 event-related brain potential derived from EEG and the third utilizes functional magnetic resonance imaging responses accompanying the viewing (or hearing) of crime scene details. All these measures use the guilty knowledge test (also called the concealed information test) protocol to discover concealed memories. The research literature and current status of the guilty knowledge test with the various measures are reviewed.Less

The Development of Episodic Memory: An Event-Related Brain Potential Vantage Point

David Friedman

in Origins and Development of Recollection: Perspectives from Psychology and Neuroscience

This chapter reviews research on how the event-related potentials correlates with the development of recollection. By comparing the correlates of recollection to those of familiarity, and by probing ... More

This chapter reviews research on how the event-related potentials correlates with the development of recollection. By comparing the correlates of recollection to those of familiarity, and by probing the processes (semantic processing, monitoring) thought to influence recollection, their nature and interaction during development are clarified.Less

Involuntary Attention

Joseph B Hopfinger and Emily L Parks

in The Neuroscience of Attention: Attentional Control and Selection

This chapter focuses on research using the event-related potential (ERP) method to investigate the mechanisms of involuntary attention. Given the very rapid time course of reflexive attention, and ... More

This chapter focuses on research using the event-related potential (ERP) method to investigate the mechanisms of involuntary attention. Given the very rapid time course of reflexive attention, and given its rapid switch from facilitating to inhibiting target processing, methods that directly measure neural activity are important for understanding the rapid dynamics of involuntary attention. The critical issues reviewed in the chapter revolve around the following questions: What stage or stages of processing, from initial sensation through response execution, are modulated by mechanisms of involuntary attention? Do involuntary and voluntary attention affect neural processing in the same way? How do voluntary and involuntary attention interact when pitted against each other? Is the capture of attention automatic, or is it contingent on top-down goals? What distinguishes the ability of some subjects to avoid distraction better than others? Beyond the initial reflexive orienting toward a salient stimulus, what involuntarily holds attention?Less

The ERP and cognitive psychology: conceptual issues

Michael D. Rugg and Michael G. H. Coles

in Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-related Brain Potentials and Cognition

This chapter focuses on the issues that arise in making inferences from event-related potentials (ERPs) about cognition. It is argued that establishing the functional significance of cognitive ERPs ... More

This chapter focuses on the issues that arise in making inferences from event-related potentials (ERPs) about cognition. It is argued that establishing the functional significance of cognitive ERPs requires the identification of both their cognitive correlates and their neural origins.Less

Paediatric vision testing

Janette Atkinson

in The Developing Visual Brain

This chapter describes some of the methods used for testing vision in infants and young children in research and clinical assessment, including behavioural measures from observing eye movements ... More

This chapter describes some of the methods used for testing vision in infants and young children in research and clinical assessment, including behavioural measures from observing eye movements (forced choice preferential looking /habituation), video/photorefraction, and visual evoked potentials (VEP) or visual event related potentials (VERP). It outlines how these methods have been used and compared, including the use of forced-choice preferential looking for acuity testing and acuity measures in preschool children using the Cambridge Crowding Cards, devised in the Visual Development Unit. It describes the subtests from the Atkinson Battery of Child Development for Examining Functional Vision (ABCDEFV), a behavioural battery which assesses children's functional use of sensory, perceptual, and cognitive vision, from birth to five years.Less

Electrophysiological studies of memory in epilepsy

Thomas Grunwald and Manila Vannucci

in Epilepsy and Memory

Invasive recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) from depth electrodes within the human hippocampal formation have identified novelty detection as an important subprocess that contributes to ... More

Invasive recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) from depth electrodes within the human hippocampal formation have identified novelty detection as an important subprocess that contributes to encoding for verbal memory. N400 potentials associated with this process correlate with neuronal density of the hippocampal CA1-region and can be selectively reduced by the NMDA-receptor blocker ketamine. Together with the finding that NMDA-receptor dependent long-term potentiation can readily be induced only in slices of non-sclerotic but not of sclerotic human hippocampi these results suggest that successful encoding for verbal memory is mediated by NMDA-receptor dependent novelty detection within the human hippocampal system and that hippocampal sclerosis interferes with this process. Moreover, hippocampal ERP recordings indicate that temporal lobe epilepsy can interfere with the hippocampal differentiation between pictures of real and nonsense objects thus suggesting that impaired encoding of visual-semantic attributes of objects may contribute to visual memory deficits.Less

Emotional Influences on Visuospatial Attention

Harlan M Fichtenholtz and Kevin S LaBar

in The Neuroscience of Attention: Attentional Control and Selection

This chapter focuses on how emotional processing in the amygdala and related limbic regions interact with frontoparietal attentional control systems and the visual processing stream. Such effects ... More

This chapter focuses on how emotional processing in the amygdala and related limbic regions interact with frontoparietal attentional control systems and the visual processing stream. Such effects have been elucidated by studying neurologic patients with brain damage, as well as by functional brain imaging methods in healthy individuals. A systematic treatment of attentional biases in affective disorders is beyond the scope of this chapter, although it mentions some studies that investigate how anxiety as a trait marker moderates emotion-attention interactions. It also considers the time course of emotional influences on visual processing that have been revealed by event-related potential (ERP) studies in humans.Less

Electro- and magneto-encephalographic and event-related potential studies of visual processing in normals and neurological patients

Thomas F. Münte and Hans-Jochen Heinze

in The Neuropsychology of Vision

This chapter provides an overview of non-invasive electrophysiological studies of the human visual system. It begins to explore the influences of passive visual stimulation using different stimuli, ... More

This chapter provides an overview of non-invasive electrophysiological studies of the human visual system. It begins to explore the influences of passive visual stimulation using different stimuli, followed by a review of the effects of attention to location and other visual features on event-related brain potentials. It then considers recent findings linked to complex visual stimuli such as hierarchically structured objects and faces. A prevailing theme in experimental psychology is that selection of stimuli by the visual system is predominately obtained on the basis of location. Screening a complex visual scene for some relevant item or feature is a prerequisite for the survival of the individuum. It is shown that event-related potentials (ERPs) now provide a quite detailed picture of face-processing in humans. Event-related brain potentials, event-related magnetic fields, and induced activity are applied to track the fate of a visual stimulus on its way through the cortex.Less

Event-related potential explorations of dual processes in recognition memory

Tim Curran, Katharine L. Tepe, and Carley Piatt

in Handbook of Binding and Memory: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience

This chapter reviews recent event-related potential (ERP) work relevant to the dual-process perspective and examines the implications of this ... More

This chapter reviews recent event-related potential (ERP) work relevant to the dual-process perspective and examines the implications of this work for understanding binding in human memory. In particular, it reviews evidence relevant to the hypothesis that the 300–500 ms FN400 ERP old-new effect is related to familiarity, and the 400–800 ms parietal ERP old-new effect is related to recollection.Less

Multiple Electrophysiological Indices of Distinctiveness

Monica Fabiani

in Distinctiveness and Memory

Several types of distinctiveness are typically identified in the literature. Among them, primary distinctiveness refers to the fact that some events come to stand out by virtue of the context in ... More

Several types of distinctiveness are typically identified in the literature. Among them, primary distinctiveness refers to the fact that some events come to stand out by virtue of the context in which they are embedded, whereas secondary distinctiveness refers to events that violate our expectancies based on our general world knowledge, rather than on their immediate context. This chapter describes an additional concept: subjective distinctiveness. By and large, experimental manipulations of the context in which stimuli are embedded are effective in making them stand out in the eyes of the participants. This chapter reviews data from studies on event-related potentials. These data are based largely on paradigms manipulating primary distinctiveness, and are sometimes collected for the explicit purpose of assessing the memory consequences of this manipulation (and their relationship to the underlying brain activity). From these data, inferences are made about various aspects of cognition, including sensory and working memory. It is clear that some of the processes that may in the end contribute to enhanced memory performance may occur during the rehearsal or retrieval of the events.Less

A Look around at What Lies Ahead: Prediction and Predictability in Language Processing

Marta Kutas, Katherine A. DeLong, and Nathaniel J. Smith

in Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future

This chapter examines linguistic prediction from multiple perspectives, ranging from theoretical models that analyze predictability at the level of ambiguity resolution, to experimental evidence ... More

This chapter examines linguistic prediction from multiple perspectives, ranging from theoretical models that analyze predictability at the level of ambiguity resolution, to experimental evidence primarily from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that supports a “strong” model of prediction in which items are not just incrementally integrated, but are wholly or featurally pre-activated via accruing mental sentential representations. It also explores possible consequences of a neural language parser (aka, brain) that may be prone to mispredicting, and what electrophysiological evidence for such processing may look like. The chapter concludes by arguing for the importance of investigating such linguistic effects as yet another example of a neural system in which probability estimation is inherent. It proposes moving beyond the debate of whether there is linguistic prediction, toward focusing research efforts on how pre-activation may occur and what is pre-activated.Less

Perceiving Social Category Information from Faces: Using ERPs to Study Person Perception

Tiffany A. Ito

in Social Neuroscience: Toward Understanding the Underpinnings of the Social Mind

The human ability to perceive faces is particularly impressive when considered in the context of the many different social inferences we perform, as well as the high degree of accuracy and relatively ... More

The human ability to perceive faces is particularly impressive when considered in the context of the many different social inferences we perform, as well as the high degree of accuracy and relatively little effort with which they are typically made. Even very brief glimpses at a person's face may allow us to gain information relevant to determining his or her emotional state, personality characteristics, and identity. Face perception has also been recognized as supporting inferences about social category membership, with information about an individual's race, gender, and age usually easily determined from his or her face. All of these inferences are integral to social perception, but it is the latter category of inferences that are of particular interest in this chapter, which reviews the line of research pursued using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to study social perception, focusing particularly on the perception of race and gender cues.Less