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Word‐specific cortical activity as revealed by the mismatch negativity
Author(s) -
Pulvermüller Friedemann,
Shtyrov Yury,
Kujala Teija,
Näätänen Risto
Publication year - 2004
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/j.1469-8986.2003.00135.x
Subject(s) - mismatch negativity , pseudoword , psychology , context (archaeology) , brain activity and meditation , lateralization of brain function , electroencephalography , word (group theory) , auditory cortex , neuroscience , cognitive psychology , cognition , linguistics , paleontology , biology , philosophy
Neurophysiological brain activity evoked by individual spoken words and pseudowords was recorded and the mismatch negativity (MMN), an automatic index of experience‐dependent auditory memory traces, was calculated. Consistent with earlier reported results, the MMN response to word‐final syllables was enhanced compared with that elicited by the same syllables placed in a pseudoword context. Here we now demonstrate that the enhancement of the MMN elicited by two individual words showed different scalp topographies. The early word‐specific brain activity is consistent with the assumption that the memory traces activated by individual words are carried by large neuronal ensembles that differ in their distributions over the cortex. Current source estimates localized the between‐word differences in the right hemisphere and in parieto‐occipital left‐hemispheric areas. The differential brain responses to individual words appeared as early as ∼100 ms after the recognition points of the words, suggesting that their specific memory traces become active almost immediately after the information in the acoustic input is sufficient for word identification.