The Self-reference Effect Can Modulate Language Syntactic Processing Even Without Explicit Awareness: An Electroencephalography Study

Although it is well established that self-related information can rapidly capture our attention and bias cognitive functioning, whether this self-bias can affect language processing remains largely unknown. In addition, there is an ongoing debate as to the functional independence of language processes, notably regarding the syntactic domain. Hence, this study investigated the influence of self-related content on syntactic speech processing. Participants listened to sentences that could contain morphosyntactic anomalies while the masked face identity (self, friend, or unknown faces) was presented for 16 msec preceding the critical word. The language-related ERP components (left anterior negativity [LAN] and P600) appeared for all identity conditions. However, the largest LAN effect followed by a reduced P600 effect was observed for self-faces, whereas a larger LAN with no reduction of the P600 was found for friend faces compared with unknown faces. These data suggest that both early and late syntactic processes can be modulated by self-related content. In addition, alpha power was more suppressed over the left inferior frontal gyrus only when self-faces appeared before the critical word. This may reflect higher semantic demands concomitant to early syntactic operations (around 150-550 msec). Our data also provide further evidence of self-specific response, as reflected by the N250 component. Collectively, our results suggest that identity-related information is rapidly decoded from facial stimuli and may impact core linguistic processes, supporting an interactive view of syntactic processing. This study provides evidence that the self-reference effect can be extended to syntactic processing.

Efficacy of Pulmonary Rehabilitation in Post-COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND

This systematic review and meta-analysis examines how pulmonary rehabilitation impacts in patients suffering from subacute and long COVID-19 infections, gauging enhancements in of dyspnea, physical function, quality of life, psychological state (anxiety and depression), and fatigue.

METHODS

Three electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library) were systematically searched for full-text articles published from inception to January 2023. Randomized, quasi-experimental, and observational studies were included, with adults diagnosed with subacute or long COVID-19 who received pulmonary rehabilitation as intervention. Outcomes related to dyspnea, physical function, quality of life, fatigue, and psychological status were included. Risk of bias was assessed with Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for Randomized Controlled Trials and Risk of bias in non-randomized studies of intervention. The review was registered before starting in PROSPERO (CRD: 42022373075).

RESULTS

Thirty-four studies were included, involving 1970 patients with subacute and long COVID-19. The meta-analysis demonstrated moderate to large effects on dyspnea, physical function, quality of life, and depressive symptoms compared to usual care intervention. No significant differences were found in fatigue compared to usual care, nor in anxiety levels after pulmonary rehabilitation intervention.

CONCLUSIONS

Pulmonary rehabilitation has the potential to improve health outcomes in patients with subacute and long COVID-19. However, due to the high risk of bias of included studies, conclusions should be taken with caution.

Awake and Sleep Bruxism Prevalence and Their Associated Psychological Factors in First-Year University Students: A Pre-Mid-Post COVID-19 Pandemic Comparison

There is a broad consensus accepting that psychological variables such as stress, anxiety, or depression play an important role in bruxism. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in stress, anxiety, and depression levels. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on possible awake and sleep bruxism prevalence and on the psychological factors associated with bruxism, comparing pre-pandemic, pandemic/lockdown, and post-pandemic samples of first-year students. A total of 274 dentistry students from the Complutense University of Madrid participated in the study: 92 from 2018/2019 (pre-pandemic), 90 from 2020/2021 (pandemic), and 92 students from 2021/2022 (post-pandemic) academic years. The participants filled out a thorough battery of validated questionnaires evaluating bruxism and different psychological characteristics, such as anxiety, depression, somatization, personality, and stress coping styles. While sleep bruxism prevalence was significantly higher for the pandemic group, awake bruxism was smaller in comparison to pre-pandemic and post-pandemic groups. The post-pandemic group also presented higher levels of neuroticism and agreeableness personality traits, and positive reappraisal than the pre-pandemic group, with the pandemic group somewhere in between. Additionally, both the pandemic and post-pandemic group showed higher levels of depression and acceptance/resignation coping styles than the pre-pandemic group. Thus, among the three groups of students, the post-pandemic group was the one that showed a larger effect of the pandemic situation in their psychological variables, presenting higher levels of anxiety (state and trait), depression, acceptation/resignation coping style, higher neuroticism (emotional instability trait), and lower agreeableness trait. Nonetheless, the increase of positive reappraisal in the post-pandemic group (an adaptive coping stress style) might be also a sign of recovery. The higher sleep bruxism for the pandemic group might be related to the pandemic situation and lockdown, passively suffered, possibly promoting feelings of impotency, increased levels of depression and acceptance/resignation (normally considered a passive/maladaptive coping style), while acute stressful situations derived from daily personal social interactions might have increased anxiety levels and induced higher levels of awake bruxism observed in both the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic groups. However, further research, including larger and more representative samples, is needed to confirm this possible relationship.

Psychological and Behavioral Factors Involved in Temporomandibular Myalgia and Migraine: Common but Differentiated Profiles

BACKGROUND

Many studies have revealed high comorbidity and a clear association between temporomandibular disorders (TMD) and migraine. Furthermore, evidence points out that common psychological and behavioral factors might be related to the observed TMD and migraine association. However, this association and the underlying psychological factors are poorly understood.

OBJECTIVE

The main goal of this study was to describe the psychological and behavioral factors involved in TMD myalgia and migraine.

METHODS

A sample of 142 participants were recruited to form 4 groups: migraine patients (ICHD-III criteria), painful-TMD patients (Myalgia DC/TMD criteria), patients suffering from both pathologies according to the same criteria, and control patients. After a dental and neurological examination, the patients filled several psychological questionnaires validated for the Spanish population to assess anxiety (STAI), depression (DEP), stress coping (CRI), and somatic, anxiety, and depression symptoms (BSI-18).

RESULTS

The TMD myalgia patients, in general, showed a state of elevated anxiety, somatization, and reduced coping strategies, while the patients with migraine presented greater anxiety symptoms, depression (dysthymia trait and state), and somatization.

CONCLUSIONS

According to the data of the present study, situational anxiety (transient emotional state), together with the lack of coping strategies, could be more associated with TMD myalgia, while anxiety, as a more stable and long-lasting emotional state, together with depression, might be more related to migraine. Further longitudinal studies are needed to unravel whether these differentiated profiles are a consequence or possible risk factors for migraine and TMD.

Altered electromyographic responses to emotional and pain information in awake bruxers: case-control study

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to investigate how emotional information and pain-related information affect the activity of the masticatory muscles in participants with awake bruxism and controls.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Different videos and texts, with positive, negative, and neutral valence or related to pain, were presented to a sample of university students, while their electromyographic (EMG) activity around the masseter muscle and their skin conductance were recorded. Two groups were selected, with 24 subjects each: one group of subjects with definitive awake bruxism (confirmed by posterior EMG activity) who also suffered from moderate jaw discomfort, and another group of subjects without bruxism.

RESULTS

The results demonstrated that the subjects with definitive awake bruxism displayed greater muscular activity when presented videos and texts with negative valence, especially when related to pain, than the non-bruxist group.

CONCLUSIONS

This study supports the idea that persons with bruxism who also suffer moderate levels of jaw discomfort present greater bruxism activity when watching pain-related stimuli, and to a lesser extent when watching negative stimuli.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE

The increased muscular activity induced by negative and pain-related information might contribute to pain exacerbation and perpetuation in persons with bruxism who suffer from discomfort.

Central sensitization in burning mouth syndrome: a practical approach using questionnaires

OBJECTIVES

Some experts have suggested that burning mouth syndrome (BMS) should be included in the family of central sensitivity syndromes, a group of similar medical disorders linked by the central sensitization (CS) mechanism. Our objective is to assess the presence of CS in patients with BMS by performing a clinical examination and administering questionnaires to measure the generalized extent of pain, the presence of associated symptoms, and the number of other concurrent chronic pain conditions.

STUDY DESIGN

We conducted a case-control study in 82 subjects (40 patients with BMS and 42 controls). Patients with BMS were diagnosed using The International Classification of Headache Disorders 3rd edition, beta version (ICHD-IIIβ) criteria. The Widespread Pain Index (WPI) and Symptom Severity (SS) Score questionnaires were used to determine the degree of central sensitivity. The number of other concurrent chronic pain conditions was determined with the Neblett inventory.

RESULTS

Data indicative of CS show a statistically significant association with BMS. Both SS Score and Widespread Pain Index scores higher in patients with BMS. Additionally, patients with BMS reported a significantly higher number of other central sensitivity syndromes.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with BMS could present a CS component as well as other chronic pain conditions. The use of questionnaires may be useful to determine the degree of central sensitivity in patients with BMS.

The Automatic but Flexible and Content-Dependent Nature of Syntax

Syntactic processing has often been considered an utmost example of unconscious automatic processing. In this line, it has been demonstrated that masked words containing syntactic anomalies are processed by our brain triggering event related potential (ERP) components similar to the ones triggered by conscious syntactic anomalies, thus supporting the automatic nature of the syntactic processing. Conversely, recent evidence also points out that regardless of the level of awareness, emotional information and other relevant extralinguistic information modulate conscious syntactic processing too. These results are also in line with suggestions that, under certain circumstances, syntactic processing could also be flexible and context-dependent. However, the study of the concomitant automatic but flexible conception of syntactic parsing is very scarce. Hence, to this aim, we examined whether and how masked emotional words (positive, negative, and neutral masked adjectives) containing morphosyntactic anomalies (half of the cases) affect linguistic comprehension of an ongoing unmasked sentence that also can contain a number agreement anomaly between the noun and the verb. ERP components were observed to emotional information (EPN), masked anomalies (LAN and a weak P600), and unmasked ones (LAN/N400 and P600). Furthermore, interactions in the processing of conscious and unconscious morphosyntactic anomalies and between unconscious emotional information and conscious anomalies were detected. The findings support, on the one hand, the automatic nature of syntax, given that syntactic components LAN and P600 were observed to unconscious anomalies. On the other hand, the flexible, permeable, and context-dependent nature of the syntactic processing is also supported, since unconscious information modulated conscious syntactic components. This double nature of syntactic processing is in line with theories of automaticity, suggesting that even unconscious/automatic, syntactic processing is flexible, adaptable, and context-dependent.

Neural dynamics of pride and shame in social context: an approach with event-related brain electrical potentials

The neural underpinnings of social emotions such as pride and shame are largely unknown. The present study aims to add evidence by exploiting the advantage of event-related brain electrical potentials (ERP) to examine the neural processes as they unfold over time. For this purpose, a dot-estimation task was adapted to explore these emotions as elicited in a simulated social context. Pride prompted an early negativity seemingly originated in medial parietal regions (precuneus) and possibly reflecting social comparison processes in successful trials. This was followed by a late positivity originated in medial frontal regions, probably reflecting the verification of singularly successful trials. Shame, in turn, elicited an early negativity apparently originated in the cuneus, probably related to mental imagery of the social situation. It was followed by a late positivity mainly originated in the same regions as the early negativity for pride, then conceivably reflecting social comparison processes, in this occasion in unsuccessful trials. None of these fluctuations correlated with self-reported feelings of either emotion, suggesting that they instead relate to social cognitive computations necessary to achieve them. The present results provide a dynamic depiction of neural mechanisms underlying these social emotions, probing the necessity to study them using an integrated approach with different techniques.

Situating language in a minimal social context: how seeing a picture of the speaker's face affects language comprehension

Natural use of language involves at least two individuals. Some studies have focused on the interaction between senders in communicative situations and how the knowledge about the speaker can bias language comprehension. However, the mere effect of a face as a social context on language processing remains unknown. In the present study, we used event-related potentials to investigate the semantic and morphosyntactic processing of speech in the presence of a photographic portrait of the speaker. In Experiment 1, we show that the N400, a component related to semantic comprehension, increased its amplitude when processed within this minimal social context compared to a scrambled face control condition. Hence, the semantic neural processing of speech is sensitive to the concomitant perception of a picture of the speaker's face, even if irrelevant to the content of the sentences. Moreover, a late posterior negativity effect was found to the presentation of the speaker's face compared to control stimuli. In contrast, in Experiment 2, we found that morphosyntactic processing, as reflected in left anterior negativity and P600 effects, is not notably affected by the presence of the speaker's portrait. Overall, the present findings suggest that the mere presence of the speaker's image seems to trigger a minimal communicative context, increasing processing resources for language comprehension at the semantic level.

How society modulates our behavior: Effects on error processing of masked emotional cues contextualized in social status

In the present study, we investigate whether subliminal complex social cues have an impact on error-monitoring processes. For this purpose, we presented two social status ranks (high and low) with three possible emotional expressions (happy, neutral, angry), using a backward masking paradigm. Participants were instructed to perform a flanker task while recording Event-Related brain Potentials. Results showed larger amplitudes for the Error-Related Negativity index after the presentation of high relative to low social ranks, only for neutral expressions. Neither the angry nor the happy faces induced significant differences in social rank processing. This indicates that subliminal high social ranks, specifically with neutral expressions, increase error processing by boosting attentional control to perform the ongoing task. Our findings extend current knowledge on the automaticity of social and emotional processing and its influence on performance monitoring mechanisms.

Adaptive Stress Coping in Awake Bruxism

Numerous studies have analyzed the relationship between psychological factors and bruxism. However, the data are often obscured by the lack of precise diagnostic criteria and the variety of the psychological questionnaires used. The purpose of this study is to determine the association between awake bruxism and psychological factors (anxiety, depression, sociability, stress coping, and personality traits). With this aim, 68 participants (13 males) completed a battery of psychological questionnaires, a self-reported bruxism questionnaire, and a clinical examination. Based on their scores on the bruxism questionnaire and the clinical examination, subjects were divided into two groups. Subjects who met the criteria for “probable awake bruxism” were assigned to the case group (n = 29, five males). The control group (n = 39, nine males) was composed of subjects who showed no signs or symptoms of bruxism in the examination nor in the questionnaire. The probable awake bruxism group presented significantly higher levels of trait and state anxiety, symptoms of somatization, and neuroticism than the control group. Despite this, and when their problem coping strategies were considered, awake bruxers showed higher levels in Positive Reappraisal (p < 0.05), a strategy generally considered as adaptive. In conclusion, although awake bruxers in our study showed larger levels of anxiety, somatization, and neuroticism, they also displayed more adapted coping strategies, while according to previous data TMD patients (which generally also present high levels of anxiety, somatization and neuroticism) might tend to present less adaptive coping styles. Thus, awake bruxism may play a positive role in stress coping, which would be compatible with the hypothesis of mastication as a means of relieving psychological tension. This finding should be further confirmed by future research comparing TMD patients with definitive awake bruxers and controls and using larger and more representative samples.

Am I the same person across my life span? An event-related brain potentials study of the temporal perspective in self-identity

While self-identity recognition has been largely explored, less is known on how self-identity changes as a function of time. The present work aims to explore the influence of the temporal perspective on self-identity by studying event-related brain potentials (ERP) associated with face processing. To this purpose, participants had to perform a recognition task in two blocks with different task demands: (i) identity recognition (self, close-friend, unknown), and (ii) life stage recognition (adulthood -current-, adolescence, and childhood). The results showed that the N170 component was sensitive to changes in the global face configuration when comparing adulthood with other life stages. The N250 was the earliest neural marker discriminating self from other identities and may be related to a preferential deployment of attentional resources to recognize own face. The P3 was a robust index of self-specificity, reflecting stimulus categorization and presumably adding an emotional value. The results of interest emerged for the subsequent late positive complex (LPC). The larger amplitude for the LPC to the self-face was probably associated with further personal significance. The LPC, therefore, was able to distinguish the continuity of the self over time (i.e., between current self and past selves). Likewise, this component also could discriminate, at each life stage, the self-identity from other identities (e.g., between past self and past close-friend). This would confirm a remarkable role of the LPC reflecting higher self-relevance processes. Taken together, the neural representation of oneself (i.e., "I am myself") seems to be stable and also updated across time.

Language comprehension in the social brain: Electrophysiological brain signals of social presence effects during syntactic and semantic sentence processing

Although, evolutionarily, language emerged predominantly for social purposes, much has yet to be uncovered regarding how language processing is affected by social context. Social presence research studies the ways in which the presence of a conspecific affects processing, but has yet to be thoroughly applied to language processes. The principal aim of this study was to see how syntactic and semantic language processing might be subject to mere social presence effects by studying Event-Related brain Potentials (ERP). In a sentence correctness task, participants read sentences with a semantic or syntactic anomaly while being either alone or in the mere presence of a confederate. Compared to the alone condition, the presence condition was associated with an enhanced N400 component and a more centro-posterior LAN component (interpreted as an N400). The results seem to imply a boosting of heuristic language processing strategies, proper of lexico-semantic operations, which actually entails a shift in the strategy to process morphosyntactic violations, typically based on algorithmic or rule-based strategies. The effects cannot be related to increased arousal levels. The apparent enhancement of the activity in the precuneus while in presence of another person suggests that the effects conceivably relate to social cognitive and attentional factors. The present results suggest that understanding language comprehension would not be complete without considering the impact of social presence effects, inherent to the most natural and fundamental communicative scenarios.

Effects of reader's facial expression on syntactic processing: A brain potential study

Embodied views of language support that facial sensorimotor information can modulate language comprehension. The aim of this study is to test whether the syntactic processing of simple sentences, as measured with event-related brain potentials (ERP), could be affected by reader's facial expressions. Participants performed a correctness decision task using sentences that could be either correct (50%) or contain a morphosyntactic disagreement (either in gender or number), while making one of four facial expressions: participants either (a) posed no facial expression ("control" condition) (b) brought their eyebrows together, making the ends of two golf tees touch ("frown" condition), (c) held a pencil with their teeth ("smile" condition), or (d) held the pencil using their lips ("non-smile" condition). In all conditions the customary left anterior negativities did not appear. In contrast, an N400-like component emerged, which was larger for the "frown" condition and reduced in the "smile" and "non-smile" conditions. These results can be interpreted as the consequence of either an unconscious emotion induction or an interplay between the motor and the language systems subsequent to the effort needed to hold the facial expression.

Isolating the Effects of Word's Emotional Valence on Subsequent Morphosyntactic Processing: An Event-Related Brain Potentials Study

Emotional information significantly affects cognitive processes, as proved by research in the past decades. Recently, emotional effects on language comprehension and, particularly, syntactic processing, have been reported. However, more research is needed, as this is yet very scarce. The present paper focuses on the effects of emotion-laden linguistic material (words) on subsequent morphosyntactic processing, by using Event-Related brain Potentials (ERP). The main aim of this paper is to clarify whether the effects previously reported remain when positive, negative and neutral stimuli are equated in arousal levels and whether they remain long-lasting. In addition, we aimed at testing whether these effects vary as a function of the task performed with the emotion-laden words, to assess their robustness across variations in attention and cognitive load during the processing of the emotional words. In this regard, two different tasks were performed: a reading aloud (RA) task, where participants simply read aloud the words, written in black on white background, and an Emotional Stroop (ES) task, where participants named the colors in which the emotional words were shown. After these words, neutral sentences followed, that had to be evaluated for grammaticality while recording ERPs (50% containing a morphosyntactic anomaly). ERP analyses showed main effects of valence across tasks on the two components reflecting morphosyntactic processing: The Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) is increased by previous emotional words (more by negative than positive) relative to neutral ones, while the P600 is similarly decreased. No interactions between task and valence were found. As a result, an emotion-laden word preceding a sentence can modulate the syntactic processing of the latter, independently of the arousal and processing conditions of the emotional word.

When syntax meets action: Brain potential evidence of overlapping between language and motor sequencing

This study aims to extend the embodied cognition approach to syntactic processing. The hypothesis is that the brain resources to plan and perform motor sequences are also involved in syntactic processing. To test this hypothesis, Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read sentences with embedded relative clauses, judging for their acceptability (half of the sentences contained a subject-verb morphosyntactic disagreement). The sentences, previously divided into three segments, were self-administered segment-by-segment in two different sequential manners: linear or non-linear. Linear self-administration consisted of successively pressing three buttons with three consecutive fingers in the right hand, while non-linear self-administration implied the substitution of the finger in the middle position by the right foot. Our aim was to test whether syntactic processing could be affected by the manner the sentences were self-administered. Main results revealed that the ERPs LAN component vanished whereas the P600 component increased in response to incorrect verbs, for non-linear relative to linear self-administration. The LAN and P600 components reflect early and late syntactic processing, respectively. Our results convey evidence that language syntactic processing and performing non-linguistic motor sequences may share resources in the human brain.

Subliminal Emotional Words Impact Syntactic Processing: Evidence from Performance and Event-Related Brain Potentials

Recent studies demonstrate that syntactic processing can be affected by emotional information and that subliminal emotional information can also affect cognitive processes. In this study, we explore whether unconscious emotional information may also impact syntactic processing. In an Event-Related brain Potential (ERP) study, positive, neutral and negative subliminal adjectives were inserted within neutral sentences, just before the presentation of the supraliminal adjective. They could either be correct (50%) or contain a morphosyntactic violation (number or gender disagreements). Larger error rates were observed for incorrect sentences than for correct ones, in contrast to most studies using supraliminal information. Strikingly, emotional adjectives affected the conscious syntactic processing of sentences containing morphosyntactic anomalies. The neutral condition elicited left anterior negativity (LAN) followed by a P600 component. However, a lack of anterior negativity and an early P600 onset for the negative condition were found, probably as a result of the negative subliminal correct adjective capturing early syntactic resources. Positive masked adjectives in turn prompted an N400 component in response to morphosyntactic violations, probably reflecting the induction of a heuristic processing mode involving access to lexico-semantic information to solve agreement anomalies. Our results add to recent evidence on the impact of emotional information on syntactic processing, while showing that this can occur even when the reader is unaware of the emotional stimuli.

Do discourse global coherence and cumulated information impact on sentence syntactic processing? An event-related brain potentials study

The present study aimed at exploring how two main primarily semantic factors of discourse comprehension, namely global coherence and amount of information cumulated across a passage, may impact on the sentential syntactic processing. This was measured in two event-related brain potentials (ERP) to grammatical (morphosyntactic) violations: anterior negativities (LAN) and posterior positivities (P600). Global coherence did not yield any significant effects on either ERP component, although it appeared advantageous to the detection of morphosyntactic errors. Anterior negativities were also unaffected by the amount of cumulated information. Accordingly, it seems that first-pass syntactic processes are unaffected by these discourse variables. In contrast, the first portion of the P600 was significantly modulated (increased) by the latter factor. This probably reflects bigger efforts to combine sentential information during situations highly demanding for working memory. Our results would suggest that processes involved in global discourse coherence appear relatively independent of the on-line syntactic and combinatorial mechanisms reflected in the LAN and the P600 components of the ERPs.

Counterintuitive Religious Ideas and Metaphoric Thinking: An Event-Related Brain Potential Study

It has been shown that counterintuitive ideas from mythological and religious texts are more acceptable than other (non-religious) world knowledge violations. In the present experiment we explored whether this relates to the way they are interpreted (literal vs. metaphorical). Participants were presented with verification questions that referred to either the literal or a metaphorical meaning of the sentence previously read (counterintuitive religious, counterintuitive non-religious and intuitive), in a block-wise design. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results converged. At variance to the literal interpretation of the sentences, the induced metaphorical interpretation specifically facilitated the integration (N400 amplitude decrease) of religious counterintuitions, whereas the semantic processing of non-religious counterintuitions was not affected by the interpretation mode. We suggest that religious ideas tend to operate like other instances of figurative language, such as metaphors, facilitating their acceptability despite their counterintuitive nature.

The influence of emotional words on sentence processing: electrophysiological and behavioral evidence

Whereas most previous studies on emotion in language have focussed on single words, we investigated the influence of the emotional valence of a word on the syntactic and semantic processes unfolding during sentence comprehension, by means of event-related brain potentials (ERP). Experiment 1 assessed how positive, negative, and neutral adjectives that could be either syntactically correct or incorrect (violation of number agreement) modulate syntax-sensitive ERP components. The amplitude of the left anterior negativity (LAN) to morphosyntactic violations increased in negative and decreased in positive words in comparison to neutral words. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented but positive, negative, and neutral adjectives could be either semantically correct or anomalous given the sentence context. The N400 to semantic anomalies was not significantly affected by the valence of the violating word. However, positive words in a sentence seemed to influence semantic correctness decisions, also triggering an apparent N400 reduction irrespective of the correctness value of the word. Later linguistic processes, as reflected in the P600 component, were unaffected in either experiment. Overall, our results indicate that emotional valence in a word impacts the syntactic and semantic processing of sentences, with differential effects as a function of valence and domain.

How the emotional content of discourse affects language comprehension

Emotion effects on cognition have often been reported. However, only few studies investigated emotional effects on subsequent language processing, and in most cases these effects were induced by non-linguistic stimuli such as films, faces, or pictures. Here, we investigated how a paragraph of positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence affects the processing of a subsequent emotionally neutral sentence, which contained either semantic, syntactic, or no violation, respectively, by means of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data revealed strong effects of emotion; error rates and reaction times increased significantly in sentences preceded by a positive paragraph relative to negative and neutral ones. In ERPs, the N400 to semantic violations was not affected by emotion. In the syntactic experiment, however, clear emotion effects were observed on ERPs. The left anterior negativity (LAN) to syntactic violations, which was not visible in the neutral condition, was present in the negative and positive conditions. This is interpreted as reflecting modulatory effects of prior emotions on syntactic processing, which is discussed in the light of three alternative or complementary explanations based on emotion-induced cognitive styles, working memory, and arousal models. The present effects of emotion on the LAN are especially remarkable considering that syntactic processing has often been regarded as encapsulated and autonomous.

The sacred and the absurd--an electrophysiological study of counterintuitive ideas (at sentence level)

Religious beliefs are both catchy and durable: they exhibit a high degree of adherence to our cognitive system, given their success of transmission and spreading throughout history. A prominent explanation for religion's cultural success comes from the "MCI hypothesis," according to which religious beliefs are both easy to recall and desirable to transmit because they are minimally counterintuitive (MCI). This hypothesis has been empirically tested at concept and narrative levels by recall measures. However, the neural correlates of MCI concepts remain poorly understood. We used the N400 component of the event-related brain potential as a measure of counterintuitiveness of violations comparing religious and non-religious sentences, both counterintuitive, when presented in isolation. Around 80% in either condition were core-knowledge violations. We found smaller N400 amplitudes for religious as compared to non-religious counterintuitive ideas, suggesting that religious ideas are less semantically anomalous. Moreover, behavioral measures revealed that religious ideas are not readily detected as unacceptable. Finally, systematic analyses of our materials, according to conceptual features proposed in cognitive models of religion, did not reveal any outstanding variable significantly contributing to these differences. Refinements of cognitive models of religion should elucidate which combination of factors renders an anomaly less counterintuitive and thus more suitable for recall and transmission.