Thirty years and counting: Finding meaning in the N400 component of the event related brain potential (ERP)

By Marta Kutas, Kara D. Federmeier. Annual Review of Psychology, 2011

4,026 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We overview the discovery, characterization, and evolving use of the N400, an event-related brain potential response linked to meaning processing. We describe the elicitation of N400s by an impressive range of stimulus types -- including written, spoken, and signed (pseudo)words, drawings, photos, and videos of faces, objects and actions, sounds, and mathematical symbols -- and outline the sensitivity of N400 amplitude (as its latency is remarkably constant) to linguistic and nonlinguistic manipulations. We emphasize the effectiveness of the N400 as a dependent variable for examining almost every aspect of language processing, and highlight its expanding use to probe semantic memory and to determine how the neurocognitive system dynamically and flexibly uses bottom-up and top-down information to make sense of the world. We conclude with different theories of the N400’s functional significance and offer an N400-inspired re-conceptualization of how meaning processing might unfold.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/882c9c639e74b69cf3f5fe0efcaa6c7539fb22a5

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Citations in the corpus

Prediction during language comprehension: benefits, costs, and ERP components. (2012, background): “…that a large negativity between 200 and 500 ms or so (the N400) is the default response to words, and that its amplitude is reduced to the degree that context aids in their interpretation (see Hagoort and van Berkum, 2007; Kutas et al., 2006; Kutas and Federmeier, 2011 for more extensive reviews ).”
An ERP study on L2 syntax processing: When do learners fail? (2014, background): “This is surprising, since the N400 is a component normally associated with difficulty in semantic integration (see Kutas and Federmeier, 2011, for an overview).”
Predicting form and meaning: Evidence from brain potentials (2016, methodology): “We investigate pre-activation, as indexed by N400 ERP modulations (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011), at a word presentation rate that is standard in reading ERP studies (Experiment 1; 500 ms per word) and at a slower presentation rate (Experiment 2; 700 ms per word) which allows more time to generate…”
Getting real about semantic illusions: rethinking the functional role of the P600 in language comprehension. (2012, background): “However, alternative views have recently come to the fore in which N400 amplitude is interpreted in terms of memory retrieval rather than integration (see Federmeier and Laszlo, 2009; Kutas and Federmeier, 2000, 2011, for overviews).”
Autobiographically Significant Concepts: More Episodic than Semantic in Nature? An Electrophysiological Investigation of Overlapping Types of Memory (2015, methodology): “In this study, we used ERPs to assess the neural correlates of semantic and episodic contributions to AS concepts.”
The cortical dynamics of speaking: present shortcomings and future avenues (2016, background): “…semantic, grammatical and phonological predictions (e.g. DeLong, Urbach, & Kutas, 2005; Federmeier & Kutas, 1999; Heald & Nusbaum, 2014; Kutas & Federmeier, 2000, 2011; Tian & Poeppel, 2010), and that the time-course of cortical area activations of linguistic knowledge can be…”
The effect of word predictability on reading time is logarithmic (2013, neutral): “…or expectation for specific words affect not only reading times but also neural responses (DeLong, Urbach, & Kutas, 2005; Kutas & Hillyard, 1984; Kutas & Federmeier, 2011; Van Berkum, Brown, Zwitserlood, Kooijman, & Hagoort, 2005; Wicha, Bates, Moreno, & Kutas, 2003) and interpretation of…”
Minimally Verbal School‐Aged Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Neglected End of the Spectrum (2013, methodology): “For over 30 years, ERPs have been used to index different aspects of language comprehension as well as other aspects of cognitive functioning [Kutas & Federmeier, 2011].”
The interplay of individual differences and context of learning in behavioral and neurocognitive second language development (2018, background): “Considering that the N400 is posited to reflect semantic processing strategies (see Kuperberg, 2007; Kutas and Federmeier, 2011), if studyabroad experience pushes learners to employ meaning-based communicative strategies, we might expect learners who have just returned from immersion to make more us”
MUC (Memory, Unification, Control) and beyond (2013, result): “…further details, see Baggio and Hagoort, 2011) is consistent with available anatomical and functional data, as well as with recent accounts as proposed by Kutas and Federmeier in their review of 30 years N400 research (Kutas and Federmeier, 2011) and by Nieuwland et al. (Nieuwland et al., 2010).”
Shared computational principles for language processing in humans and deep language models (2022, background): “Detecting increased neural activity 400 ms after word onset for unpredictable words, documented across many studies 34,35 , has traditionally been used as indirect evidence for pre-onset predictions.”
Investigating scalar implicatures in a truth-value judgement task: evidence from event-related brain potentials (2016, background): “The N400 is a negative-going shift in an ERP waveform, maximal over the centro-parietal scalp sites, of a latency ranging between 200 and 600 ms, and peaking roughly 400 ms post-stimulus onset (Kutas & Federmeier, 2011; Swaab, Ledoux, Camblin, & Boudewyn, 2012).”
The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. (2013, positive): “This effect is known to occur whenever the participant’s brain tries to interpret the meaning that a sentence, or a short clip, or other “messages” conveys, without any success (e.g. Kutas & Federmeier 2011).”