How Does the Brain Make Sense Out of a Jumble of Words?

Psychologist Jos J.A. Van Berkum from the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands described recent experiments using brain waves to understand how we are able to make sense of sentences. In these experiments, Van Berkum and his colleagues examined event related potentials (or ERPs) as people read or heard critical sentences as part of a longer text, or placed in some other type of context. ERPs are changes in brain activity that occur when we hear a certain stimulus, such as a tone or a word.

Due to their speed, ERPs are useful for detecting the incredibly fast processes involved in understanding language. Analysis of the ERPs has consistently indicated just how quickly the brain is able to relate unfolding sentences to earlier ones. For example, Van Berkum and colleagues have shown that listeners only need a fraction of a second to determine that a word is out of place, given what ... more.

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