The relationship between the evoked responses (ERPs/ERFs) and the event-related changes in EEG/MEG power that can be observed during sentence-level language comprehension is as yet unclear. This study addresses a possible relationship between MEG power changes and the N400m component of the event-related field. Whole-head MEG was recorded while subjects listened to spoken sentences with incongruent (IC) or congruent (C) sentence endings. A clear N400m was observed over the left hemisphere, and was larger for the IC sentences than for the C sentences. A time-frequency analysis of power revealed a decrease in alpha and beta power over the left hemisphere in roughly the same time range as the N400m for the IC relative to the C condition. A linear regression analysis revealed a positive linear relationship between N400m and beta power for the IC condition, not for the C condition. No such linear relation was found between N400m and alpha power for either condition. The sources of the beta decrease were estimated in the LIFG, a region known to be involved in semantic unification operations. One source of the N400m was estimated in the left superior temporal region, which has been related to lexical retrieval. We interpret our data within a framework in which beta oscillations are inversely related to the engagement of task-relevant brain networks. The source reconstructions of the beta power suppression and the N400m effect support the notion of a dynamic communication between the LIFG and the left superior temporal region during language comprehension.
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There remains some debate about whether beta power effects observed during sentence comprehension reflect ongoing syntactic unification operations (beta-syntax hypothesis), or instead reflect maintenance or updating of the sentence-level representation (beta-maintenance hypothesis). In this study, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate beta power neural dynamics while participants read relative clause sentences that were initially ambiguous between a subject- or an object-relative reading. An additional condition included a grammatical violation at the disambiguation point in the relative clause sentences. The beta-maintenance hypothesis predicts a decrease in beta power at the disambiguation point for unexpected (and less preferred) object-relative clause sentences and grammatical violations, as both signal a need to update the sentence-level representation. While the beta-syntax hypothesis also predicts a beta power decrease for grammatical violations due to a disruption of syntactic unification operations, it instead predicts an increase in beta power for the object-relative clause condition because syntactic unification at the point of disambiguation becomes more demanding. We observed decreased beta power for both the agreement violation and object-relative clause conditions in typical left hemisphere language regions, which provides compelling support for the beta-maintenance hypothesis. Mid-frontal theta power effects were also present for grammatical violations and object-relative clause sentences, suggesting that violations and unexpected sentence interpretations are registered as conflicts by the brain's domain-general error detection system.
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Conference organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University, Hilscher Rezső Social Policy Association, Gyere Association and CARe Europe 3 Foreword 5 Section 1. Transition from institutional to recovery-oriented community care: challenges throughout Europe 5 Zsolt Bugarszki: Introduction 7 Jan Pfeiff er: Developments in Central and Eastern Europe with regard to transition from Institutional to Community Care 13 Robert van Voren: Reform of the mental health system in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Republics 17 Jean-Pierre Wilken: Developments in Western Europe with regard to transition from traditional to recovery oriented care 21 Dirk den Hollander: Recognition of power and the power of recognition
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There is growing evidence suggesting that synchronization changes in the oscillatory neuronal dynamics in the EEG or MEG reflect the transient coupling and uncoupling of functional networks related to different aspects of language comprehension. In this work, we examine how sentence-level syntactic unification operations are reflected in the oscillatory dynamics of the MEG. Participants read sentences that were either correct, contained a word category violation, or were constituted of random word sequences devoid of syntactic structure. A time-frequency analysis of MEG power changes revealed three types of effects. The first type of effect was related to the detection of a (word category) violation in a syntactically structured sentence, and was found in the alpha and gamma frequency bands. A second type of effect was maximally sensitive to the syntactic manipulations: A linear increase in beta power across the sentence was present for correct sentences, was disrupted upon the occurrence of a word category violation, and was absent in syntactically unstructured random word sequences. We therefore relate this effect to syntactic unification operations. Thirdly, we observed a linear increase in theta power across the sentence for all syntactically structured sentences. The effects are tentatively related to the building of a working memory trace of the linguistic input. In conclusion, the data seem to suggest that syntactic unification is reflected by neuronal synchronization in the lower-beta frequency band.
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The event-related potential (ERP) approach has provided a wealth of fine-grained information about the time course and the neural basis of cognitive processing events. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, an increasing number of researchers began to realize that an ERP only represents a certain part of the event-related electroencephalographic (EEG) signal. This chapter focuses on another aspect of event-related EEG activity: oscillatory EEG activity. There exists a meaningful relationship between oscillatory neuronal dynamics, on the one hand, and a wide range of cognitive processes, on the other hand. Given that the analysis of oscillatory dynamics extracts information from the EEG/magnetoencephalographic (EEG/MEG) signal that is largely lost with the traditional time-locked averaging of single trials used in the ERP approach, studying the dynamic oscillatory patterns in the EEG/MEG is at least a useful addition to the traditional ERP approach.
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In this presentation of her current research project Rebecca Louise Breuer questions the common enhancement of the body through, for instance, self-tracking, data collecting and monitoring of everyday and athletic movement. She attempts to provide an alternative perspective through discussing the concept of uncommon sense by turning to (micro-)phenomenological philosophical concepts as presented by Gilles Deleuze, Hermann Schmitz, Claire Petitmengin and Peter Sloterdijk. The case study used during this presentation, which will sketch an artistic, creative alternative to common sensoring devices, is found in the sound producing pressure sensors incorporated in the Lace Sensor Dresses by Anja Hertenberger and Meg Grant, artists working in the field of e-textiles and wearable electronics.
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