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Magnetic brain activity evoked and induced by visually presented words and nonverbal stimuli
Author(s) -
Eulitz Carsten,
Eulitz Hind,
Maess Burkhard,
Cohen Rudolf,
Pantev Christo,
Elbert Thomas
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.3740447
Subject(s) - psychology , stimulus (psychology) , brain activity and meditation , audiology , electroencephalography , nonverbal communication , lateralization of brain function , neuroscience , scalp , laterality , communication , cognitive psychology , medicine , anatomy
Evoked and induced magnetic brain activity measured over the left hemisphere were tested for their specificity to language‐related processing. Induced activity refers to oscillatory alterations time locked but not phase locked to the stimulus. Words, false font stimuli, and two types of nonverbal patterns were presented visually while subjects performed a nonlinguistic visual feature detection task. The comparison of evoked and induced brain activity around 200 ms after stimulus onset revealed differential sensitivity to the stimuli. The M180 component of the evoked magnetic field was larger at the processing of words and false font stimuli compared with nonverbal stimuli. The induced magnetic brain activity in the 60‐Hz band at a compatible latency range was correlated with the familiarity of the visual Gestalt. Sensitivity to language‐specific information processing can be concluded if a parameter differentiates the word condition from the nonlexical conditions. Such a difference was observed at sensors located over the frontal‐temporal scalp regions for induced but not evoked magnetic brain activity. Thus, evoked and induced magnetic brain activity revealed a differential sensitivity to elements of cognitive processing during the given task.