Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T23:20:25.280Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Functional modularity of semantic memory revealed by event-related brain potentials

from Part II - Insights from Electrophysiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2009

By
John Kounios
Edited by
John Hart  and
Michael A. Kraut
John Kounios
Affiliation:
Drexel University
John Hart
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Dallas
Michael A. Kraut
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Get access

Summary

Theorists have faced a lack of consensus about basic properties of mind and brain. Of these basic properties, perhaps the most important is whether mind and brain are best conceived of as consisting of a number of independently functioning processing modules (e.g. Donders, 1868; Posner & Raichle, 1994; Sternberg, 1969, 1998, 2001), or rather as a single entity consisting of a large number of massively interacting parts (e.g. Anderson, 1995; Rumelhart, McClelland, & the PDP Research Group, 1986). Answering this question is extremely important, because the answer necessarily directs the course of both theory construction and experimentation in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and the study of semantic memory in particular.

As a contribution toward clarifying this issue, this chapter demonstrates how event-related potentials (ERPs) can be used to detect, isolate, and analyze functional neural modules, with special attention to functional modularity in semantic information processing. The method and analyses described in this chapter are also applicable to the closely related technique of magnetoencephalography (MEG; Hämäläinen, Hari, Ilmoniemi, Knuutila, & Lounasmaa, 1993), as well as to ERPs. The approach described here is based on a well-known physical property of electric fields in a volume conductor such as the brain, namely, that electric fields generated by separate sources combine by summation (Kutas & Dale, 1997; Nunez, 1981, 1990). Expanding on earlier work (Kounios, 1996; see also Kounios & Holcomb, 1992; Sternberg, 2001), this chapter shows how factorial experimental design can enable independent manipulation of these separate sources, yielding additive contributions to the aggregate electric field detectable at the scalp.

Keywords

additive-amplitude methodbrain-imagingelectrophysiological dataevent-related potentialsneurocognitive modulesneuroscienceparallel geometrical configurationneural modulessemantic information processing
Type
Chapter
Information
Neural Basis of Semantic Memory , pp. 65 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, J. A. (1995). An Introduction to Neural Networks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Arbib, M. A., Erdi, P., and Szentagothai, J. (1998). Neural Organization: Structure, function, and dynamics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Balota, D. A. and Black, S. (1997). Semantic satiation in healthy young and older adults. Memory & Cognition, 25: 190–202.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coles, M. G. H. (1989). Modern mind–brain reading: psychophysiology, physiology, and cognition. Psychophysiology, 26: 251–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coltheart, M. (1999). Modularity and cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3: 115–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crick, F. and Asanuma, C. (1986). Certain aspects of the anatomy and physiology of the cerebral cortex. In McClelland, J. L., Rumelhart, D. E., and the PDP Research Group (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume 2: Psychological and biological models. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 333–71.Google Scholar
Donders, F. C. (1868). Over de snelheid van psychische processen. Onderzoekingen gedaan in het Physiologisch Laboratorium der Utrechtsche Hoogeschool, 2: 92–100. Translated by W. G. Koster (1969) as On the speed of mental processes. In: Attention and performanceII. Acta Psychologica, 30: 312–41.Google Scholar
Edgell, S. E. (1995). Commentary on “Accepting the null hypothesis”. Memory & Cognition, 23: 525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falk, R. (1998). In criticism of the null hypothesis statistical test. American Psychologist, 53: 798–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farah, M. J. (1994). Neuropsychological inference with an interactive brain: a critique of the “locality assumption,”Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 17: 43–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1983). The modularity of mind: An essay on faculty psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Frick, R. W. (1995a). Accepting the null hypothesis. Memory & Cognition, 23: 132–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frick, R. W. (1995b). A reply to Edgell. Memory & Cognition, 23: 526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geisser, S. and Greenhouse, S. (1959). On methods in the analysis of profile data. Psychometrika, 24: 95–112.Google Scholar
Gevins, A. (1996). High resolution evoked potentials of cognition. Brain Topography, 8: 189–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Granaas, M. M. (1998). Model fitting: a better approach. American Psychologist, 53: 800–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagen, R. (1997). In praise of the null hypothesis statistical test. American Psychologist, 52: 15–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagen, R. (1998). A further look at wrong reasons to abandon statistical testing. American Psychologist, 53: 801–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hämäläinen, M., Hari, R., Ilmoniemi, R., Knuutila, J., and Lounasmaa, O. V. (1993). Magnetoencephalography: theory, instrumentation, and applications to non-invasive studies of the working human brain. Reviews of Modern Physics, 65: 413–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillyard, S. A. and Picton, T. W. (1987). Electrophysiology of cognition. In Plum, F. (ed.), Handbook of Physiology: Section 1. Neurophysiology. Bethesda, MD: American Physiological Society.Google Scholar
Hinton, G. E., McClelland, J. L., and Rumelhart, D. E. (1986). Distributed representations. In Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. L., and the PDP Research Group (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume 1: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 77–109.Google Scholar
Hinton, G. E., Plaut, D. C., and Shallice, T. (1993). Simulating brain damage. Scientific American, October, 76–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holcomb, P. J., Kounios, J., Anderson, J. E., and West, W. C. (1999). Dual coding, context availability, and concreteness effects in sentence comprehension: an electrophysiological investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25: 721–42.Google ScholarPubMed
Jacobs, R. A. (1997). Nature, nurture, and the development of functional specializations: a computational approach. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4: 299–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, R. A., Jordan, M. I., and Barto, A. G. (1991). Task decomposition through competition in a modular connectionist architecture: the what and where vision tasks. Cognitive Science, 15: 219–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., and Jessell, T. M. (1995). Essentials of neural science and behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. Appleton & Lange.
Kieras, D. (1978). Beyond pictures and words: alternative information processing models for imagery effects in verbal memory. Psychological Bulletin, 85: 532–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, R. T. and Grabowecky, M. (1995). Escape from linear time: prefrontal cortex and conscious experience. In Gazzaniga, M. (ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1357–71.Google Scholar
Kounios, J. (1993). Process complexity in semantic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19: 338–51.Google Scholar
Kounios, J. (1996). On the continuity of thought and the representation of knowledge: electrophysiological and behavioral time-course measures reveal levels of structure in semantic memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3: 265–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kounios, J. and Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Structure and process in semantic memory: evidence from event-related potentials and reaction times. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 121: 459–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kounios, J. and Holcomb, P. J. (1994). Concreteness effects in semantic processing: ERP evidence supporting dual-coding theory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20: 804–23.Google ScholarPubMed
Kounios, J., Holcomb, P. J., and Kotz, S. (2000). Is the semantic satiation effect really semantic? Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Memory & Cognition, 28: 1366–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kounios, J., Smith, R. W., Yang, W., Bachman, P., and D'Esposito, M. (2001). Cognitive association formation in human memory revealed by spatiotemporal brain imaging. Neuron, 29: 297–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kutas, M. and Dale, A. (1997). Electrical and magnetic readings of mental functions. In Rugg, M.D. (ed.), Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 197–242.Google Scholar
Kutas, M. and van Petten, C. (1994). Psycholinguistics electrified. In Gernsbacher, M. (ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 83–143.Google Scholar
Malgady, R. G. (1998). In praise of value judgments in null hypothesis testing… and of “accepting” the null hypothesis. American Psychologist, 53: 797–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mangun, G. R., Hillyard, S. A., and Luck, S. (1993). Electrocortical substrates of visual selective attention. In Meyer, D. E. and Kornblum, S. (eds.), Attention & Performance XIV. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 219–44.Google Scholar
Martin, J. H. (1991). The collective electrical behavior of cortical neurons: the electroencephalogram and the mechanisms of epilepsy. In Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., and Jessell, T. M. (eds.), Principles of Neural Science. East Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange, pp. 777–91.Google Scholar
McCarthy, G., Nobre, A., Bentin, S., and Spencer, D. (1995). Language-related field potentials in the anterior-medial temporal lobe: I. Intracranial distribution and neural generators. Journal of Neuroscience, 15: 1080–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCarthy, G. and Wood, C. C. (1985). Scalp distributions of event-related potentials: an ambiguity associated with analysis of variance models. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 62: 203–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McClelland, J. L. (1996). Integration of information: reflections on the theme of attention and performance XVI. In Inui, T. and McClelland, J. L. (eds.), Attention and Performance XVI: Information integration in perception and communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 633–56.Google Scholar
McGrath, R. E. (1998). Significance testing: Is there something better?American Psychologist, 53: 796–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, D. E., Irwin, D. E., Osman, A. M., and Kounios, J. (1988). The dynamics of cognition and action: mental processes inferred from speed-accuracy decomposition. Psychological Review, 95: 183–237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mountcastle, V. B. (1979). An organizing principle for cerebral function: the unit module and the distributed system. In Schmitt, F. O. and Worden, F. G. (eds.), The neurosciences: A fourth study program. Cambrige, MA: MIT Press, pp. 21–42.Google Scholar
Mountcastle, V. B. (1998). Perceptual neuroscience: The cerebral cortex. Cambrige, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Neely, J. H. (1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106: 226–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nobre, A. C. and McCarthy, G. (1995a). Language-related ERPs: scalp distributions and modulation by word type and semantic priming. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 6: 233–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nobre, A. C. and McCarthy, G. (1995b). Language-related field potentials in the anterior-medial temporal lobe: II. Effects of word type and semantic priming. Journal of Neuroscience, 15: 1090–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunez, P. (1981). Electric Fields of the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nunez, P. (1990). Physical principles and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying event-related potentials. In Rohrbaugh, J. W., Parasuraman, R., and Johnson, Jr R.. (eds.), Event-Related Brain Potentials: Basic issues and applications. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–36.Google Scholar
Osman, A. M. and Moore, C. M. (1993). The locus of dual-task interference: psychological refractory effects on movement-related brain potentials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19: 1292–312.Google ScholarPubMed
Osterhout, L. and Holcomb, P. J. (1995). Event-related potentials and language comprehension. In Rugg, M. and Coles, M. G. H. (eds.), Electrophysiology of Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 171–215.Google Scholar
Paivio, A. (1986). Mental Representations: A dual coding approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pascual-Marqui, R. D., Michel, C. M., and Lehmann, D. (1994). Low resolution electromagnetic tomography: a new method for localizing activity in the brain. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 18: 49–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picton, T. W., Lins, O. G., and Scherg, M. (1995). The recording and analysis of event-related potentials. In Johnson, R. and Baron, J. C. (eds.), Handbook of Physiology, Volume 10. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 3–73.Google Scholar
Posner, M. I. and Raichle, M. E. (1994). Images of Mind. New York: Scientific American Library.Google Scholar
Posner, M. I. and Snyder, C. R. R. (1975). Facilitation and inhibition in the processing of signals. In Rabbitt, P. M. A. and Dornic, S. (eds.), Attention and Performance V. New York: Academic Press, pp. 669–82.Google Scholar
Rugg, M. and Coles, M. G. H. (eds.) (1995). Electrophysiology of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. L., and the PDP Research Group (1987). Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume 1: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. E., Smolensky, P., McClelland, J. L., and Hinton, G. E. (1987). Schemata and sequential thought processes, In McClelland, J. L., Rumelhart, D. E., and the PDP Research Group (eds.), Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volume 2: Psychological and biological models. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 7–57.Google Scholar
Scherg, M. (1990). Fundamentals of dipole source potential analysis. In Grandori, F., Hoke, M., and Romani, G.L. (eds.), Advances in Audiology, Volume 6: Auditory evoked magnetic fields and electric potentials. Basel: Karger, pp. 40–69.Google Scholar
Schwanenflugel, P. and Shoben, E. (1983). Differential context effects in the comprehension of abstract and concrete verbal materials. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9: 82–102.Google Scholar
Schweickert, R. (1993). Information, time, and the structure of mental events: a twenty-five-year review. In Meyer, D. E. and Kornblum, S. (eds.), Attention & Performance XIV. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 535–66.Google Scholar
Smith, L. C. (1984). Semantic satiation affects category membership decision time but not lexical priming. Memory & Cognition, 12: 483–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, L. C. and Klein, R. (1990). Evidence for semantic satiation: repeating a category slows subsequent semantic processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16: 852–61.Google Scholar
Smith, R. W. and Kounios, J. (1996). Sudden insight: all-or-none processing revealed by speed-accuracy decomposition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22: 1443–62.Google ScholarPubMed
Smith, R. W., Kounios, J., and Osterhout, L. (1997). On the applicability and robustness of speed-accuracy decomposition, a technique for investigating partial information. Psychological Methods, 2: 95–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, S. (1969). The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders' method. In Koster, W. G. (ed.), Attention and performance II. Acta Psychologica, 30: 276–315.Google Scholar
Sternberg, S. (1998). Discovering mental processing stages: the method of additive factors. In Scarborough, D. and Sternberg, S. (eds.), An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Volume 4: Methods, Models, and Conceptual Issues. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 365–454.Google Scholar
Sternberg, S. (2001). Separate modifiability, mental modules, and the use of pure and composite measures to reveal them. Acta Psychologica, 106: 147–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, B. (1998). In praise of brilliance: where that praise really belongs. American Psychologist, 53: 799–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tryon, W. W. (1998). The inscrutable null hypothesis. American Psychologist, 53: 796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verleger, R. (1988). Event-related potentials and cognition: a critique of the context updating hypothesis and an alternate interpretation of the P3. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 11: 343–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, P. K. H. (1991). Introduction to Brain Topography. New York and London: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×