ABSTRACT
We review the study of normal and abnormal linguistic and communicative processes via scalp-recorded event-related brain potential (ERP) or “brainwave” studies of reading, listening, signing, and gesturing. Such event-related brain potentials (ERPs) can be recorded throughout the lifespan, at various levels of consciousness (from alert healthy individuals to comatose or vegetative state patients), and in populations diverse in their abilities to respond motorically. These electrical “snapshots” of neocortical activity concomitant with comprehension and production of language offer a relatively sensitive and temporally precise look at the factors that influence human communication. The topics covered in this review range from how brains respond to small linguistic units (e.g., phonemes) to higher levels of linguistic analysis (e.g., pragmatic aspects of discourse comprehension). We introduce robust paradigms, describe the concomitant patterns of electrical brain activity, and explain what sorts of questions about language they can answer, even if little indicates that either the dependent measures or answers are language specific.
