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A topographical study of ERP correlates of semantic and syntactic violations in the Japanese language using the multichannel EEG system
Author(s) -
Nakagome Kazuyuki,
Takazawa Satoru,
Kanno Osamu,
Hagiwara Hiroko,
Nakajima Heizo,
Itoh Kenji,
Koshida Ichiro
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.3820304
Subject(s) - psychology , electroencephalography , cognitive psychology , linguistics , semantics (computer science) , neuroscience , computer science , programming language , philosophy
Language processing was investigated using event‐related potentials obtained using a multichannel (58‐channel) EEG system, with regard to semantic dependency (i.e., selectional restriction between a verb and the arguments it takes; the SR type) and syntactic dependency between sentence‐final particles and interrogative phrases (the WH‐Q type) in Japanese. It was found that semantic violations elicited the conventional N400, which was distributed in the bilateral occipital and the right temporal regions, and that the syntactic violations elicited the P600 in a broad area, predominantly in the centroparietal regions. Scalp current density mappings suggested that the right temporal cortex plays a significant role in integrating pieces of contextual information, especially when it is difficult to integrate a word in the context of a sentence, and that the P600 was connected to the syntactic processes conceivably indexed by the left temporal current sink with a relatively early onset.