This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [61433015], National Social Science Major Fund of China[14ZDB154; 15ZDB017], and the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [14YJC740104]. We express great gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

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There are no competing financial interests.

Experimental results and significance 
In the repetition part, the results demonstrated that the N400 effect became smaller and smaller until almost non-existent. The greatly attenuated N400 effect proved that multiple repetitions did significantly modulate the amplitude of N400. However, the results in this part cannot show whether N400 was actually affected by the change of expectancy or semantic integration. The attenuated N400 effect can still be explained differently. One explanation is that ex...

Anomalous sentences are widely used by linguists to study online cognitive processing of normal languages. For example, in event-related potentials (ERP) studies, sentences with semantic anomalies (e.g., &#34;He spread the warm bread with socks.&#34;) were reported to elicit an N400 effect1 (but also see some other studies reporting a semantic P600 effect2,3), while sentences with syntactic difficulties or anomalies (e.g., &#34;The woman persuaded to answer the door&#8230;&#34;) were reported to elicit a P600 effect4,5. These electrophysiological components are widely used as reliable indicators for investigating the normal temporal courses of processing information from different aspects of language, such as syntax and semantics.
Anomalous sentences cause great difficulties for semantic integration processing during comprehension. However, confounding factors such as unexpectedness (i.e., any anomalous expression is naturally an unexpected expression) make it difficult to determine the true cognitive process underlying the observed effect elicited by anomalous sentences. For example, if an N400 effect is elicited by an anomalous sentence, it is unclear whether it is caused by unexpectedness6,7,8 or integrative difficulty1,9,10.
To ascertain whether it is expectancy or semantic integration difficulty that contributes to the elicited electrophysiological effect, we need to dissociate these two factors. Traditionally, expectancy is often measured by corpus frequency (in word studies) or cloze probability (in sentence studies). The widely applied method to manipulate expectancy in traditional experiments is by choosing stimuli with high and low scores in expectancy to form expected and unexpected groups. This method is effective in manipulating expectancy and has produced abundant insightful results.
However, as a static approach to manipulating expectancy, it has one limitation: it is hard for the expected and unexpected groups to have the same semantic integration difficulty. With this manipulation, the stimuli selected for the expected and unexpected groups have to be different; thus the semantic integration difficulty is altered when we manipulate expectancy by using different stimuli with different expectancy values or cloze probabilities). While we may find unexpected but reasonable expressions (i.e., unexpected expressions made up of words that can be successfully integrated into a reasonable message), it is possible that the integrative efforts required by these unexpected but reasonable expressions are different from those required by normal expressions. If the differences are not controlled, significant differences in brain responses might ensue, as clear evidence demonstrates that the integrative processing of unexpected but reasonable new metaphorical expressions triggers brain responses quite different from those triggered by conventional metaphors11,12.
To address this issue, we propose a new method to dynamically enhance participants&#39; expectancy for anomalous sentences while trying to maintain the semantic integration difficulty. Specifically, we quickly familiarize participants with unfamiliar anomalous sentences and thus enhance their expectancy through multiple repetitions. Importantly, multiple repetitions do not change the stimulus itself; therefore, the semantically anomalous information itself remains unchanged (i.e., the critical word still cannot be successfully integrated into the context).
However, the brain might give up integration after learning that the anomalous information cannot be successfully integrated into the previous context at all (i.e., the integration processing might be absent so that there is no integration difficulty). Therefore, this protocol proposes to repeat only the core anomalous information extracted from the anomalous sentence first, and then use the complete anomalous sentence which contains the identical anomalous information as a semantically enriched version of this core anomalous information, to initiate new semantic integration processing in the repetition condition. With the identical anomalous information in the semantically enriched complete anomalous sentence and the initiated new semantic integration processing, we assume that the semantic integration difficulty triggered by the anomalous information in the complete anomalous sentence after multiple repetitions should remain almost the same as that triggered by the anomalous information before repetitions (regardless of the status of semantic integration processing during repetitions). Hence, we assume the factor of semantic integration difficulty in the semantically enriched complete anomalous sentences remains the same after repetitions as in the correspondingly simplified core structures, but the expectancy is greatly enhanced.
Based on these assumptions, we compare the N400 effect elicited by semantically enriched complete anomalous sentences containing the repeated core anomalous information with that elicited by newly-met complete anomalous sentences, to investigate the major contributor of this elicited ERP effect. The working hypotheses are as follows: according to previous studies, the N400 effect would be significantly attenuated by repetitions. On the basis of the attenuated N400, if the newly initiated semantic integration of the same anomalous information causes recovery of the attenuated N400 effect to a level similar to that elicited by the same type of anomalous information contained in newly-met anomalous sentences with no repetitions, then it suggests that the semantic integration difficulty is the dominant contributor of the elicited N400 effect; otherwise it suggests that unexpectedness is the major contributor.

<table><tbody><tr><td>BrainAmp DC amplifier system (Brain Products GmbH)</td><td>Brain Products, Gilching, Germany</td><td></td><td>BrainAmp S/N AMP13061964DC Input 5.6DC=150mA Operation 7mA Standby</td></tr><tr><td>Easycap (Brain Products GmbH)</td><td>Brain Products, Gilching, Germany</td><td></td><td>62&lt;br/&gt; Ag/AgCl electrodes with a configuration&lt;br/&gt; of the international 10&amp;ndash;20 system of electrode</td></tr></tbody></table>

dissociation of the confounding influences of expectancy and integrative difficulty residing in anomalous sentences in event-related potential studies

The confounding factors of unexpectedness and semantic integration difficulty naturally residing in anomalous sentences in language studies make it difficult to determine the underlying processing mechanism of ERP components. Unlike the traditional static approach of manipulating expectancy through corpus frequency or cloze probability, this protocol proposes a dynamic method to enhance participants&#39; expectancy for rarely-met anomalous sentences by multiple repetitions while maintaining their semantic integration difficulties. To address the time cost increase resulting from multiple repetitions, this protocol proposes to repeat only the strictly simplified core structure extracted from the anomalous sentence before presenting the semantically enriched, much more informative complete anomalous sentence containing the anomalous core structure to reinitiate the semantic integration processing. The complete anomalous sentence elicited a P600 effect. It suggests that the participants did not give up processing the anomalous information after repetitions and the same semantic integration difficulty was successfully reinitiated. Importantly, the representative experimental results reveal that the greatly attenuated N400 effect caused by multiple repetitions was not recovered by the follow-up reinitiated semantic integration difficulty. It suggests that the attenuated N400 effect should be mainly attributed to the enhancement of expectancy for anomalous information by multiple repetitions. The experimental results show that this method can effectively enhance participants&#39; expectancy for anomalous sentences while retaining the semantic integration difficulty.

The present protocol was used in one of our recent studies to investigate whether the N400 effect reflects semantic integration processing14. The stimuli used in that study were in Chinese, as shown in Table 2.
<table border="1" fo:keep-together.within-page="1" fo:keep-with-next.within-page="always">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td colspan="3">(a) Example of the simplified core structures in the repetition part</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td></td>
			<td>Im...

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Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

We present a protocol to dissociate the intertwining factors of integrative difficulty and unexpectedness in semantically anomalous sentences by applying multiple repetitions to enhance participant&#39;s expectancy for anomalous sentences. The dissociation helps to investigate the major contributor of elicited event-related potentials (ERP) effects such as N400 in language studies.

The confounding factors of unexpectedness and semantic integration difficulty naturally residing in anomalous sentences in language studies make it ...

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5.3K Views.  Tsinghua University. Dit protocol biedt een effectieve manier om de verstorende factoren van onverwachtheid in intuïtieve moeilijkheid in afwijkende zinnen te scheiden om de werkelijke bijdrage van N400-effect in taalstudies te bepalen. In tegenstelling tot de traditionele statische benadering van het manipuleren van de verwachting door middel van corpus frequentie of cloze waarschijnlijkheid. Dit protocol stelde een dynamische missie voor om dit doel te bereiken door meerdere herhalingen.Met dit protocol...

Video: Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

Investigating the Effects of Antipsychotics and Schizotypy on the N400 Using Event-Related Potentials and Semantic Categorization

Within the field of cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a popular method of visualizing brain function. This is in part because of its excellent spatial resolution, which allows researchers to identify brain areas associated with specific cognitive processes. However, in the quest to localize brain functions, it is relevant to note that many cognitive, sensory, and motor processes have temporal distinctions that are imperative to capture, an aspect that is left unfulfilled by fMRI&#8217;s suboptimal temporal resolution. To better understand cognitive processes, it is thus advantageous to utilize event-related potential (ERP) recording as a method of gathering information about the brain. Some of its advantages include its fantastic temporal resolution, which gives researchers the ability to follow the activity of the brain down to the millisecond. It also directly indexes both excitatory and inhibitory post-synaptic potentials by which most brain computations are performed. This sits in contrast to fMRI, which captures an index of metabolic activity. Further, the non-invasive ERP method does not require a contrast condition: raw ERPs can be examined for just one experimental condition, a distinction from fMRI where control conditions must be subtracted from the experimental condition, leading to uncertainty in associating observations with experimental or contrast conditions. While it is limited by its poor spatial and subcortical activity resolution, ERP recordings&#8217; utility, relative cost-effectiveness, and associated advantages offer strong rationale for its use in cognitive neuroscience to track rapid temporal changes in neural activity. In an effort to foster increase in its use as a research imaging method, and to ensure proper and accurate data collection, the present article will outline &#8211; in the framework of a paradigm using semantic categorization to examine the effects of antipsychotics and schizotypy on the N400 &#8211; the procedure and key aspects associated with ERP data acquisition.

Using event-related EEG potentials (ERPs), we investigate the effects of antipsychotic medications on abnormal semantic brain activations in healthy individuals with schizotypal traits. We use ERPs to track distinct changes in brain activity, shedding insight into the cognitive processes associated with semantic categorization.

Within the field of cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a popular method of visualizing brain function. This is in ...

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that the low spatial frequency content in an emotional face mainly activates the amygdala, pulvinar, and superior colliculus especially with fearful faces1-3. These regions constitute the limbic structure in non-conscious perception of emotions and modulate cortical activity either directly or indirectly2. In contrast, the conscious representation of emotions is more pronounced in the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, and somatosensory cortex for directing voluntary attention to details in faces3,4. Asperger&#39;s syndrome (AS)5,6 represents an atypical mental disturbance that affects sensory, affective and communicative abilities, without interfering with normal linguistic skills and intellectual ability. Several studies have found that functional deficits in the neural circuitry important for facial emotion recognition can partly explain social communication failure in patients with AS7-9. In order to clarify the interplay between conscious and non-conscious representations of emotional faces in AS, an EEG experimental protocol is designed with two tasks involving emotionality evaluation of either photograph or line-drawing faces. A pilot study is introduced for selecting face stimuli that minimize the differences in reaction times and scores assigned to facial emotions between the pretested patients with AS and IQ/gender-matched healthy controls. Information from the pretested patients was used to develop the scoring system used for the emotionality evaluation. Research into facial emotions and visual stimuli with different spatial frequency contents has reached discrepant findings depending on the demographic characteristics of participants and task demands2. The experimental protocol is intended to clarify deficits in patients with AS in processing emotional faces when compared with healthy controls by controlling for factors unrelated to recognition of facial emotions, such as task difficulty, IQ and gender.

An EEG experimental protocol is designed to clarify the interplay between conscious and non-conscious representations of emotional faces in patients with Asperger&#39;s syndrome. The technique suggests that patients with Asperger&#39;s syndrome have deficits in non-conscious representation of emotional faces, but have comparable performance in conscious representation with healthy controls.

Several neuroimaging studies have suggested that the low spatial frequency content in an emotional face mainly activates the amygdala, pulvinar, and ...

Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

Two dominant theories on lateralized processing of emotional information exist in the literature. One theory posits that unpleasant emotions are processed by right frontal regions, while pleasant emotions are processed by left frontal regions. The other theory posits that the right hemisphere is more specialized for the processing of emotional information overall, particularly in posterior regions.
Assessing the different roles of the cerebral hemispheres in processing emotional information can be difficult without the use of neuroimaging methodologies, which are not accessible or affordable to all scientists. Divided visual field presentation of stimuli can allow for the investigation of lateralized processing of information without the use of neuroimaging technology. 
This study compared central versus divided visual field presentations of emotional images to assess differences in motivated attention between the two hemispheres. The late positive potential (LPP) was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) methodologies to assess motivated attention. Future work will pair this paradigm with a more active behavioral task to explore the behavioral impacts on the attentional differences found.

This study compared central versus divided visual field presentations of emotional images to assess differences in motivated attention between the two hemispheres. The late positive potential (LPP) was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) methodologies to assess motivated attention.

Two dominant theories on lateralized processing of emotional information exist in the literature. One theory posits that unpleasant emotions are processed ...

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential (ERP) Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have characteristic deficits in understanding the meaning of language, or semantic processing. However, some evidence indicates that semantic processing of non-linguistic stimuli is intact, suggesting that semantic deficits may be language-specific. To appropriately characterize semantic processing deficits in individuals with ASD, comparison of within-modality linguistic (e.g., written words) and non-linguistic (e.g., pictures) stimuli is required. This paper describes such a methodology that makes use of a semantic priming paradigm during concurrent recording of electroencephalographic (EEG) data. EEG provides a dynamic measure of brain activity that is well-suited to characterize subtle differences in semantic processing that may not be observable at the behavioral level. The semantic priming paradigm presents a prime picture or word (e.g., dog) followed by a target picture or word that is either related (e.g., cat) or unrelated (e.g., pencil) to the prime. This paradigm can thus be used to evaluate semantic processing across different modalities, and to compare lexico-semantic and visuo-semantic processing abilities in individuals with ASD and how they might differ from TD individuals. The specific steps involved in creating the stimuli, performing the EEG testing, and analyzing the EEG data are discussed. Representative results illustrate how the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is reduced following semantically-related prime-target pairs compared to unrelated pairs. Comparisons of the N400 between conditions, modalities, and groups can provide estimates of the success of semantic processing, and can thereby be used to characterize semantic deficits in individuals with ASD or other clinical populations.

A Semantic Priming Event-related Potential ERP Task to Study Lexico-semantic and Visuo-semantic Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder

This paper describes a semantic priming ERP task using within-modality pairs of pictures and words to investigate semantic processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have characteristic deficits in understanding the meaning of language, or semantic processing. However, ...

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on orthographic information after which, other representations, such as phonology and semantics are activated, or whether these are fully interactive and high-level semantic information affects early processing. An interference paradigm was implemented in the presented protocol of phonological and semantic judgment tasks that utilized the same precede-target pairs to explore the relative order of phonological and semantic activation. The high- and low-frequency target words were preceded with three conditions: semantically related, phonological-related (homophones), or unrelated. The results showed that the induced P200 component of low-frequency word pairs was significantly greater than high-frequency words in both the semantic and phonological tasks. In addition, both the homophones in the semantic task and the semantically related pairs in the phonological task caused reduction in N400 when compared to the the control condition, word frequency-independently. It is worth noting that for the low-frequency pairs in the phonological judgment task, the P200 released by the semantically related word pairs was significantly larger than that in the control condition. Overall, semantic processing in phonological tasks and phonological processing in semantic tasks were found in both high- and low-frequency words, suggesting that the interaction between semantics and phonology may operate in a task-independent manner. However, the specific time this interaction occurred may have been affected by the task and frequency.

We present a protocol to explore the relative activation sequence of phonology and semantics in visual word recognition. The results show that consistent with interactive accounts, semantic and phonological representations may be processed interactively, and higher-level linguistic representations may affect early processing.

Controversies have always existed in research related to reading abilities; on whether printed words are perceived in a feedforward manner based on ...

EEG Study on Recognizing Familiar Speakers in Expressive Speech

Memorization-Based Training and Testing Paradigm for Robust Vocal Identity Recognition in Expressive Speech Using Event-Related Potentials Analysis

Recognizing familiar speakers from vocal streams is a fundamental aspect of human verbal communication. However, it remains unclear how listeners can still discern the speaker's identity in expressive speech. This study develops a memorization-based individual speaker identity recognition approach and an accompanying electroencephalogram (EEG) data analysis pipeline, which monitors how listeners recognize familiar speakers and tell unfamiliar ones apart. EEG data captures online cognitive processes during new versus old speaker distinction based on voice, offering a real-time measure of brain activity, overcoming limits of reaction times and accuracy measurements. The paradigm comprises three steps: listeners establish associations between three voices and their names (training); listeners indicate the name corresponding to a voice from three candidates (checking); listeners distinguish between three old and three new speaker voices in a two-alternative forced-choice task (testing). The speech prosody in testing was either confident or doubtful. EEG data were collected using a 64-channel EEG system, followed by preprocessing and imported into RStudio for ERP and statistical analysis and MATLAB for brain topography. Results showed an enlarged late positive component (LPC) was elicited in the old-talker compared to the new-talker condition in the 400-850 ms window in the Pz and other wider range of electrodes in both prosodies. Yet, the old/new effect was robust in central and posterior electrodes for doubtful prosody perception, whereas the anterior, central, and posterior electrodes are for confident prosody condition. This study proposes that this experiment design can serve as a reference for investigating speaker-specific cue-binding effects in various scenarios (e.g., anaphoric expression) and pathologies in patients like phonagnosia.

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception

The study introduces a training-testing paradigm to investigate old/new effects of event-related potentials in confident and doubtful prosodic scenarios. Data reveals an enhanced late positive component between 400-850 ms at Pz and other electrodes. This pipeline can explore factors beyond speech prosody and their influence on cue-binding target identification.

Recognizing familiar speakers from vocal streams is a fundamental aspect of human verbal communication. However, it remains unclear how listeners can ...

How to Find Effects of Stimulus Processing on Event Related Brain Potentials of Close Others when Hyperscanning Partners

The partners of each pair must be able to pass the McGill Friendship Questionnaire without communicating. Each partner is then seated in front of a screen in one of two adjacent rooms. These rooms are separated by a glass window through which participants communicate to maintain feelings of togetherness while being fitted with the EEG cap. After checking for adequate EEG signals, the glass is covered by a curtain to prevent visual communication. Then, partners must be silent but are instructed to try to feel in the presence of their partner during the entire experiment. Just before it starts, participants are told that each of them will be presented with one image at a time and that these images will occur at the same time for both of them on their own screen. They are also instructed that, for each trial, the simultaneous images will always be different. However, unbeknownst to them, trials are randomized: only half of them are consistent with this instruction and actually include two different images. These trials form the DSC, that is, the different-stimuli condition. The other half of the trials are inconsistent with the instruction. They include two identical images and form the ISC (identical-stimuli condition). After the experiment, participants are sorted into two groups: those who reported that they felt in the presence of their partner during the majority of the trials and those who reported they did not. The impact of the stimulus processing of the partner is found by subtracting the mean voltages of the ERPs of the ISC (inconsistent with the instructions) from the ERPs of the DSC (consistent with the instructions) in at least two time windows (TWs): firstly, in the 75 to 150 ms TW, where the absolute values of these subtractions are greater, especially at right frontal sites, in those who felt in the presence of their partner than in those who did not; secondly, in the LPP time window (i.e., from 650 to 950 ms post onset), where ERPs are significantly less positive in the DSC than in the ISC in those in whom the raw results of the early (75-150ms) subtractions are negative.

This protocol describes key steps involved in assessing the sensitivity of the brain of one person to the stimulus processing of a close other by selecting pairs of partners, recording their electroencephalogram (EEG) simultaneously and computing their event-related brain potentials (ERPs).

The partners of each pair must be able to pass the McGill Friendship Questionnaire without communicating. Each partner is then seated in front of a screen ...

Neuroscience

Disruption of Frontal Lobe Neural Synchrony During Cognitive Control by Alcohol Intoxication

Decision making relies on dynamic interactions of distributed, primarily frontal brain regions. Extensive evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies indicates that the anterior cingulate (ACC) and the lateral prefrontal cortices (latPFC) are essential nodes subserving cognitive control. However, because of its limited temporal resolution, fMRI cannot accurately reflect the timing and nature of their presumed interplay. The present study combines distributed source modeling of the temporally precise magnetoencephalography (MEG) signal with structural MRI in the form of &#34;brain movies&#34; to: (1) estimate the cortical areas involved in cognitive control (&#34;where&#34;), (2) characterize their temporal sequence (&#34;when&#34;), and (3) quantify the oscillatory dynamics of their neural interactions in real time. Stroop interference was associated with greater event-related theta (4 - 7 Hz) power in the ACC during conflict detection followed by sustained sensitivity to cognitive demands in the ACC and latPFC during integration and response preparation. A phase-locking analysis revealed co-oscillatory interactions between these areas indicating their increased neural synchrony in theta band during conflict-inducing incongruous trials. These results confirm that theta oscillations are fundamental to long-range synchronization needed for integrating top-down influences during cognitive control. MEG reflects neural activity directly, which makes it suitable for pharmacological manipulations in contrast to fMRI that is sensitive to vasoactive confounds. In the present study, healthy social drinkers were given a moderate alcohol dose and placebo in a within-subject design. Acute intoxication attenuated theta power to Stroop conflict and dysregulated co-oscillations between the ACC and latPFC, confirming that alcohol is detrimental to neural synchrony subserving cognitive control. It interferes with goal-directed behavior that may result in deficient self-control, contributing to compulsive drinking. In sum, this method can provide insight into real-time interactions during cognitive processing and can characterize the selective sensitivity to pharmacological challenge across relevant neural networks.

This experiment uses an anatomically-constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) method to examine brain oscillatory dynamics and long-range functional synchrony during engagement of cognitive control as a function of acute alcohol intoxication.

Decision making relies on dynamic interactions of distributed, primarily frontal brain regions. Extensive evidence from functional magnetic resonance ...

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

Intertemporal choice plays a crucial role in our daily lives, influencing decisions related to education, health, consumption, and investment. This research proposes an innovative experimental protocol that examines how social comparison and social distance jointly affect the neural processes involved in outcome assessment for intertemporal choices. The study is based on the theoretical framework of cognitive resource competition. This protocol enables researchers to dynamically establish an indifference point for each participant, effectively eliminating the influence of any biased indifference points on the assessment of intertemporal choices. Consequently, the study solely measures the combined impact of social comparison and social distance on how participants evaluate intertemporal choice outcomes. The findings reveal that individuals are more inclined to opt for immediate outcomes under negative unfair conditions. Moreover, compared to the fair and positive unfair conditions, people tend to undervalue delayed outcomes in the negative unfair condition. The strength of this approach lies in its dynamic indifference point setting, making it an effective method to investigate the influence of various external factors (such as social status and power level) on intertemporal decision-making. While the protocol is designed to measure electrophysiological events like event-related potentials, it can also be tailored for use with fMRI.

This protocol aims to investigate the neural activity related to social comparison and social distance during the processing of intertemporal decision outcomes. Indifference points will be measured using event-related potentials as part of the study.

Intertemporal choice plays a crucial role in our daily lives, influencing decisions related to education, health, consumption, and investment. This ...

Event-related Potentials and the Oddball Task

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
Given the overwhelming amount of information captured by the sensory organs, it is crucial that the brain is able to prioritize the processing of certain stimuli, to spend less effort on what might not be currently important and to attend to what is. One heuristic the brain uses is to ignore stimuli that are frequent or constant in favor of stimuli that are unexpected or unique. Therefore, rare events tend to be more salient and capture our attention. Furthermore, stimuli that are relevant to our current behavioral goals are prioritized over those that are irrelevant. 
The neurophysiological correlates of attention have been experimentally examined through the use of the oddball paradigm. Originally introduced in 1975, the oddball task presents the participant with a sequence of repetitive audio or visual stimuli, infrequently interrupted by an unexpected stimulus.1 This interruption by a target stimulus has been shown to elicit specific electrical events that are recordable at the scalp known as event-related potentials (ERPs). An ERP is the measured brain response resulting from a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event. ERPs are measured using electroencephalography (EEG), a noninvasive means of evaluating brain function in patients with disease and normally functioning individuals. A specific ERP component found across the parietal region of the scalp, known as the P300, is enhanced in response to oddball events. The P300 is a positive-going deflection in the EEG signal that occurs about between 250 and 500 ms after stimulus onset. In general, early potentials reflect sensory-motor processing while later potentials like the P300 reflect cognitive processing. 
In this video, we show how to administer the oddball task using EEG. The video will cover the setup and administration of EEG, and analysis of ERPs related to both control and target stimuli in the oddball task. In this task, participants are set up with the EEG electrodes, then brain activity is recorded while they view control stimuli, interspersed with target stimuli. The procedure is similar to that of Habibi et al.2 Each time a target stimulus is presented, the participant presses a button. When the ERPs are averaged across the control and target stimuli, the neural correlates of each event can be compared in a selected time window.

Measuring Event-related Potentials Using EEG in Oddball Task

Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel&#8212;University of Southern California
Given the overwhelming amount of information captured ...

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

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