ERPs and morphological processing: the N400 and semantic composition.

Both behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests that fluent readers decompose morphologically complex words into their constituent parts. Previous event-related potential (ERP) research has been equivocal with regard to whether the N400 component indexes morphological decomposition or the integration of the products of decomposition, a process called semantic composition. In a visual lexical decision task with college students, we recorded ERPs to a well-controlled set of words and nonwords made up of bound morphemes (discern, predict; disject, percern) or free morphemes (cobweb, earring; cobline, bobweb) and monomorphemic control words and nonwords (garlic, minnow; gartus, buzlic).

L-kynurenine treatment alters contextual fear conditioning and context discrimination but not cue-specific fear conditioning.

The glia-derived molecule kynurenic acid (KYNA) is an antagonist of alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and the glycine(B) binding site on NMDA receptors. KYNA levels are elevated in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid of persons with schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, both of which are characterized by deficits in contextual learning and memory. The present study tested the hypothesis that increases in KYNA concentration would impair contextual fear conditioning but spare cue-specific fear conditioning.