The early context effect reflects activity in the temporo-prefrontal semantic system: Evidence from electrical neuroimaging of abstract and concrete word reading

Spatial and temporal characteristics of lexico-semantic retrieval are frequently examined with semantic context (i.e., priming) paradigms. These paradigms measure context (i.e., priming) effects in word processing evoked by semantically related context. Besides the well-known attention-dependent N400 context effect (>250 ms), recent studies demonstrate early automatic context effects in the P1-N1 time period (<200 ms). However, in visual word presentation the semantic origin of these early effects remains debated. This study examined spatio-temporal activation dynamics of the early context effect as well as the modulation of the effect by differences in structure and accessibility of verbal semantics existent in abstract and concrete words. The early context effect was measured in visually displayed words that followed semantically related single-word context. Spatial and temporal aspects of the effect were analyzed by applying topographic and source analyses on the word-triggered Event Related Potentials. The early context effect was enhanced in abstract compared to concrete words as indicated by a difference in the occurrence of P1-N1 transition map and a corresponding topographic dissimilarity (116-140 ms). This concreteness-dependent modulation demonstrates the sensitivity of the early context effect to structural differences in verbal semantics. Furthermore, the topographic difference was explained by enhanced activation in the left inferior prefrontal cortex for related compared to unrelated words in addition to temporo-parietal generators recruited in both conditions. The result suggests automatic feedforward processing of context-related information in temporo-prefrontal brain regions critical to semantic analysis. Taken together our findings show that the early context effect reflects activation processes in verbal semantic memory.