Using the readiness potential of button-press and verbal response within spoken language processing.

Background: Even though research in turn-taking in spoken dialogues is now abundant, a typical EEG-signature associated with the anticipation of turn-ends has not yet been identified until now.

New Method: The purpose of this study was to examine if readiness potentials (RP) can be used to study the anticipation of turn-ends by using it in a motoric finger movement and articulatory movement task. The goal was to determine the preconscious onset of turn-end anticipation in early, preconscious turn-end anticipation processes by the simultaneous registration of EEG measures (RP) and behavioural measures (anticipation timing accuracy, ATA).

"Too Many betas do not Spoil the Broth": The Role of Beta Brain Oscillations in Language Processing.

Over the past 20 years, brain oscillations have proven to be a gateway to the understanding of cognitive processes. It has been shown that different neurocognitive aspects of language processing are associated with brain oscillations at various frequencies. Frequencies in the beta range (13-30 Hz) turned out to be particularly important with respect to cognitive and linguistic manipulations during language processing.

Increased neuronal communication accompanying sentence comprehension.

The main purpose of this study was to examine large-scale oscillatory activity and frequency-related neuronal synchronization during the comprehension of English spoken sentences of different complexity. Therefore, EEG coherence during the processing of subject-subject (SS)- and more complex subject-object (SO)-relatives was computed using an adaptive fitting approach of bivariate auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) models which enabled the continuous calculation of coherence in the course of sentence processing with a high frequency resolution according to the dynamic changes of the EEG signals. Coherence differences between sentence types were observed in the theta (4-7 Hz), beta-1 (13-18 Hz) and gamma (30-34 Hz) frequency ranges, though emerging during the processing of different parts of these sentences: gamma differences were evident mainly during the relative clause while theta and beta-1 differed significantly following the end of the relative clause.

The contribution of EEG coherence to the investigation of language.

The contribution of EEG coherence analysis to the investigation of cognition and, in particular, language processing is demonstrated with examples of recent EEG studies. The concept of EEG coherence analysis is explained, and its importance emphasized in the light of recent neurobiological findings on frequency-dependent synchrony as a code of information processing between nerve cell assemblies. Furthermore, EEG coherence studies on naturally spoken and written word and sentence processing are reviewed and experimental results are presented giving new insights into the occurrence of "transient functional language centers" within the brain.