A topographical study of ERP correlates of semantic and syntactic violations in the Japanese language using the multichannel EEG system.
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.
Nakagome
K
K
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine. Showa University, Tokyo, Japan. nakagome@med.showa-u.ac.jp
Takazawa
S
S
Kanno
O
O
Hagiwara
H
H
Nakajima
H
H
Itoh
K
K
Koshida
I
I
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D008297:Male