Time will tell: A longitudinal investigation of brain-behavior relationships during reading development

A mapping-knowledge-domain analysis of ERP research on language processing

The event-related potentials (ERPs) technique represents a newly developed methodology in cognitive neuroscience and has significantly extended the scope of linguistic studies, offering valuable insights into cognitive processes related to language. While extant literature reviews have addressed specific facets of ERP research on language processing, a comprehensive overview of this domain remains notably absent. This study aims to fill this gap by pioneering a mapping-knowledge-domain analysis of ERP research on language processing using Citespace, a visualized bibliometric software. The current study conducted a meticulous survey and evaluation of relevant literature extracted from the Web of Science core collection. Initially, this study outlines the spatial-temporal distribution within this domain. Subsequently, employing document co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis, and burst detection analysis, this study delved deeper into the research landscape. Findings reveal that key areas in ERP research on language processing predominantly focus on sentence comprehension, reading comprehension, and mismatch negativity, with notable emphasis on topics such as speech perception, temporal dynamics, and working memory. The current study advocates for future investigations to concentrate on larger linguistic units, explore the integration of ERP components and their functional significance, and scrutinize individual differences among participants. These directions are imperative for advancing the understanding of language processing mechanisms.

Modulations of right hemisphere connectivity in young children relates to the perception of spoken words

The early school years shape a young brain's capability to comprehend and contextualize words within milliseconds of exposure. Parsing word sounds (phonological interpretation) and word recognition (enabling semantic interpretation) are integral to this process. Yet little is known about the causal mechanisms of cortical activity during these early developmental stages. In this study, we aimed to explore these causal mechanisms via dynamic causal modelling of event-related potentials (ERPs) acquired from 30 typically developing children (ages 6-8 years) as they completed a spoken word-picture matching task. Source reconstruction of high-density electroencephalography (128 channels) was used to ascertain differences in whole-brain cortical activity during semantically "congruent" and "incongruent" conditions. Source activations analyzed during the N400 ERP window identified significant regions-of-interest (p_FWE<.05) localized primarily in the right hemisphere when contrasting congruent and incongruent word-picture stimuli. Dynamic causal models (DCMs) were tested on source activations in the fusiform gyrus (rFusi), inferior parietal lobule (rIPL), inferior temporal gyrus (rITG) and superior frontal gyrus (rSFG). DCM results indicated that a fully connected bidirectional model with self-(inhibiting) connections over rFusi, rIPL and rSFG provided the highest model evidence, based on exceedance probabilities derived from Bayesian statistical inferences. Connectivity parameters of rITG and rSFG regions from the winning DCM were negatively correlated with behavioural measures of receptive vocabulary and phonological memory (p_FDR<.05), such that lower scores on these assessments corresponded with increased connectivity between temporal pole and anterior frontal regions. The findings suggest that children with lower language processing skills required increased recruitment of right hemisphere frontal/temporal areas during task performance.

ERP Indicators of Phonological Awareness Development in Children: A Systematic Review

Phonological awareness is the ability to correctly recognize and manipulate phonological structures. The role of phonological awareness in reading development has become evident in behavioral research showing that it is inherently tied to measures of phonological processing and reading ability. This has also been shown with ERP research that examined how phonological processing training can benefit reading skills. However, there have not been many attempts to systematically review how phonological awareness itself is developed neurocognitively. In the present review, we screened 224 papers and systematically reviewed 40 papers that have explored phonological awareness and phonological processing using ERP methodology with both typically developing and children with reading problems. This review highlights ERP components that can be used as neurocognitive predictors of early developmental dyslexia and reading disorders in young children. Additionally, we have presented how phonological processing is developed neurocognitively throughout childhood, as well as which phonological tasks can be used to predict the development of phonological awareness prior to developing reading skills. Neurocognitive measures of early phonological processing can serve as supplemental diagnostic sources to behavioral measures of reading abilities because they show different aspects of phonological sensitivity when compared to behavioral measures.

Very early and late form-to-meaning computations during visual word recognition as revealed by electrophysiology

We used a large-scale data-driven approach to investigate the role of word form in accessing semantics. By using distributional semantic methods and taking advantage of an ERP lexical decision mega-study, we investigated the exact time dynamic of semantic access from printed words as driven by orthography-semantics consistency (OSC) and phonology-semantics consistency (PSC). Generalized Additive Models revealed very early and late OSC-by-PSC interactions, visible at 100 and 400 msec, respectively. This pattern suggests that, during visual word recognition: a) meaning is accessed by means of two distinct and interactive paths - the orthography-to-meaning and the orthography-to-phonology-to-meaning path -, which mutually contribute to recognition since early stages; b) the system may exploit a dual mechanism for semantic access, with early and late effects associated to a fast-coarse and a slow-fine grained semantic analysis, respectively. The results also highlight the high sensitivity of the visual word recognition system to arbitrary form-meaning relations.

Decision response of subway evacuation signs based on brain component features

Due to safety issues when passengers get on and off the subway and spend a lot of time on the subway, this makes subway station signs very important. Moreover, in case of fire and other dangerous situations and emergency evacuation, the guiding signs must be able to guide passengers to leave the station and dangerous areas efficiently and orderly, so as to protect the personal and property safety of passengers. The purpose of this study was to analyze the decision response of subway evacuation signs using the characteristics of the brain components. In this study, subway model is constructed. When you perform simulation using software, you need to fine tune the parameters to get the best simulation effect. A questionnaire survey was made on the components of the subway sign. The results show that the number of people who think that the standard font of the blackboard logo is the most representative of the emergency exit, accounting for 78.2% of the total number of people, taking the image as the first choice accounted for 52.9% of the total number of people, and the green sulfur powder logo as the first choice accounted for 69.8% of the total number. This study makes an important contribution to the research of subway traffic safety problems.

Connecting and considering: Electrophysiology provides insights into comprehension

The ability to rapidly and systematically access knowledge stored in long-term memory in response to incoming sensory information-that is, to derive meaning from the world-lies at the core of human cognition. Research using methods that can precisely track brain activity over time has begun to reveal the multiple cognitive and neural mechanisms that make this possible. In this article, I delineate how a process of connecting affords an effortless, continuous infusion of meaning into human perception. In a relatively invariant time window, uncovered through studies using the N400 component of the event-related potential, incoming sensory information naturally induces a graded landscape of activation across long-term semantic memory, creating what might be called "proto-concepts". Connecting can be (but is not always) followed by a process of further considering those activations, wherein a set of more attentionally demanding "active comprehension" mechanisms mediate the selection, augmentation, and transformation of the initial semantic representations. The result is a limited set of more stable bindings that can be arranged in time or space, revised as needed, and brought to awareness. With this research, we are coming closer to understanding how the human brain is able to fluidly link sensation to experience, to appreciate language sequences and event structures, and, sometimes, to even predict what might be coming up next.

Uncoupled Brain and Behavior Changes in Lexical, Phonological, and Memory Processing in Struggling Readers

Paired behavioral and ERP measures were used to track change over time in 17 third- and fourth-grade struggling readers. Word and nonword reading on standardized tests improved, but differentiation of words and letter strings, measured by N170 and N400 amplitude, did not significantly change. Sound awareness scores improved, but the ERP rhyming effect did not significantly change. Both digit span scores and latency of the P300 oddball effect decreased. Correlations between the ostensibly matched behavioral and electrophysiological measures of change were not significant, indicating that use of ERP and behavioral measures can provide nonoverlapping insight into change during reading development.

Aerobic fitness relates to differential attentional but not language-related cognitive processes

Compelling evidence supports an association between the attribute of aerobic fitness and achievement scores on standardized tests of reading. However, such standardized assessments provide only a broad valuation of a complex network of language related sub-processes that contribute to reading and are heavily confounded by other attention-related processes. The present investigation sought to clarify the nature of the association between aerobic fitness and language processing in a sample of college-aged adults. Participants were bifurcated based on aerobic fitness level and on a separate day were asked to complete a lexical decision task while neuroelectric activity was recorded. Analysis of word-level language-related ERP components revealed no fitness differences. However, lower aerobically-fit individuals elicited smaller amplitude for attention-related ERP components relative to the higher aerobically-fit group. These data provide initial evidence to suggest that fitness-related differences in reading achievement may result from attentional processes rather than acting upon specific language-related processes.

Semantic processing in children with cochlear implants: Evidence from event-related potentials

Introduction: Existing research has shown that children with significant hearing loss who use cochlear implants (CIs) perform worse than their hearing peers on behavioral measures of spoken language. The present study sought to examine how children with CIs process lexical-semantic incongruence, as indexed by electrophysiological evidence of the N400 effect. Method: Twelve children with CIs, aged between 6 and 9 years, participated in a spoken word-picture matching task while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. To determine whether the N400 effect elicited in this group deviated from normal, independent samples t tests and analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses were used to compare the results of children with CIs against those of a similarly aged typically hearing (TH) group (n = 30). Correlational analyses were also conducted within each group to gauge the degree to which the N400 effect related to behavioral measures of spoken language. Results: An N400 effect was elicited in both groups of CI and TH children. The amplitude and latency of the N400 effect did not differ significantly between groups. Despite the similarity in ERP responses, children with CIs scored significantly lower on behavioral measures of spoken word- and sentence-level comprehension. No significant correlations between ERP and behavioral measures were found, although there was a trending relationship between sentence-level spoken language comprehension and the TH group's N400 effect mean amplitude (p = .060). Conclusions: The results suggest that, at a neural level, children with CIs can process lexical-semantic incongruence, and that other underlying processes not measured by the N400 effect contribute to this population's spoken language difficulties.