Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of N2 component in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) which was associated with the deviation from the internal model of the semantic environment. Of the visually presented stimuli 60% were nouns belonging to the same semantic category (C), 20% belonged to other categories (NC), and the other 20% were nonwords (NW). 10 subjects were asked to detect NW and to press a key. The NW elicited central N2 with peak latency about 440 msec. and parietal P3 around 590 msec. Furthermore, smaller and later N2 peaked at about 480 msec. and distributed front-centrally, appeared in response to other categories. Differences of N2 in amplitudes and latencies may reflect differences of mismatches among nonwords, other categories, and the same semantic category.
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