Late negativity in visual event-related potentials in humans to changes in topology of simple nonverbal stimuli

Abstract

Late negativity arising in ERP in response to a semantic mismatch of consistently presented stimuli is usually considered to be related with verbal or symbolic representation of stimulus during perception. It is shown in this work that the late negativity typical of the semantic mismatch develops even in the context of non- symbolic and nonverbal, for example, four-point stimulus compositions which differ only in typology or angular size. Attention distraction from trial stimuli completely eliminates the effect of the late negativity. It is suggested that the brain finds semantic and formal (physical) descriptions for any stimulus composition. This phenomenon is reflected in the N400 amplitu..