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The early left anterior negativity (commonly referred to as ELAN) is an event-related potential in electroencephalography (EEG), or component of brain activity that occurs in response to a certain kind of stimulus. It is characterized by a negative-going wave that peaks around 200 milliseconds or less after the onset of a stimulus,^[1]^[2] and most often occurs in response to linguistic stimuli that violate word-category or phrase structure rules (as in *the in room instead of in the room).^[3]^[4]^[5] As such, it is frequently a topic of study in neurolinguistics experiments, specifically in areas such as sentence processing. While it is frequently used in language research, there is no evidence yet that it is necessarily a language-specific phenomenon.

More recent work has criticized the design of many of the foundational studies that characterized the ELAN, such that apparent ELAN effects might be the result of spillover from words prior to the onset of the critical word. This raises important questions about whether the ELAN is a true ERP component or an artifact of certain experimental designs.^[6]^[7]

Characteristics

The ELAN was first reported by Angela D. Friederici as a response to German sentences with phrase structure violations,^[8] such as *the pizza was in the eaten (as opposed to the pizza was eaten); it can be elicited by English phrase structure violations such as *Max's of proof (as opposed to Max's proof) or *your write (as opposed to you write).^[4] The ELAN is not elicited by sentences with other kinds of grammatical errors, such as subject-verb disagreement (*"he go to the store" rather than "he goes to the store")^[9] or grammatically dispreferred and "awkward" sentences (such as "the doctor charged the patient was lying" rather than "the doctor charged that the patient was lying");^[10] it only appears when it is impossible to build local phrase structure.

It appears rapidly, peaking between 100 and 300 milliseconds after the onset of the grammatically incorrect stimulus^[3] (other reports have placed its time course, or latency, between 100 and 200ms,^[11] "under 200ms",^[1] "around 125 ms",^[8] or "about 160ms"^[12]). The speed of the ELAN may also be affected by characteristic of the violating stimuli; the ELAN appears later to visual stimuli that are fuzzy or difficult to see, and may occur earlier in morphologically complex spoken words where much information about the meaning of the word precedes the word's recognition point.^[12]

Its name derives from the fact that it is picked up most robustly by EEG sensors on the left front regions of the scalp;^[12] it may sometimes, however, have a bilateral (both sides of the scalp) distribution.^[13]

Some authors consider the ELAN to be a separate response from the left anterior negativity (LAN),^[1]^[12] while others label it as just an early version of the LAN.^[3]^[14]

The ELAN has been reported in languages such as English, German, Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese.^[4] It is possible, though, that it is not a response specific to language (in other words, that the ELAN might also occur in response to non-linguistic stimuli).^[15]

Use in neurolinguistics

The ELAN response has played an important role in studies of sentence processing, particularly in the development of the so-called "serial model" or "syntax-first model" of sentence processing. According to this model, the brain's first step in processing sentences is to organize input and build local phrase structure (for example, to take the words the and pizza and organize them into a noun phrase the pizza), and it does not process semantic information or meaning until after this step has succeeded.^[15]^[16]^[17] This model predicts that if the initial building of local phrase structure fails (as in the above examples *Max's of proof and *your write) then semantic processing (the brain's interpretation of the meaning of the sentence) does not go forward.^[18] This has been tested by taking advantage of two brain responses: the ELAN, which reflects the phrase-structure-building, and the N400, which reflects semantic processing; the model predicts that sentences eliciting an ELAN (a violation of local phrase structure) will not elicit an N400, since the building of phrase structure is a prerequisite for semantic processing.^[14]^[18] These types of studies have had subjects read or listen to sentences that have both a syntactic and semantic violation in the same place. Some such studies have found such sentences to elicit an ELAN and no N400, thus supporting the claim of the "serial model",^[19] while others have found both an ELAN and an N400, challenging the model.^[14]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Frisch, Stefan; Anja Hahne; Angela D. Friederici (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 191–219. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895. S2CID 44889189.
^ Pulvermüller, Friedemann; Yury Shtyrov; Anna S. Hasting; Robert P. Carlyton (2008). "Syntax as a reflex: Neurophysiological evidence for the early automaticity of syntactic processing". Brain and Language. 104 (3): 244–53. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.05.002. PMID 17624417. S2CID 13870754.
^ ^a ^b ^c Hagoort, Peter (2003). "How the brain solves the binding problem for language: a neurocomputational model of syntactic processing". NeuroImage. 20: S18–29. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.09.013. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1E0C-2. PMID 14597293. S2CID 18845725.
^ ^a ^b ^c Friederici, Angela D.; Jürgen Weissenborn (2007). "Mapping sentence form onto meaning: The syntax-semantic interface". Brain Research. 1146: 50–8. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.08.038. PMID 16956590. S2CID 14664214.
^ Friederici, Angela D. (2002). "Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 6 (2): 81. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01839-8. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0010-E573-8. PMID 15866191.
^ Steinhauer, Karsten; Drury, John E. (February 2012). "On the early left-anterior negativity (ELAN) in syntax studies". Brain and Language. 120 (2): 135–162. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2011.07.001. ISSN 1090-2155. PMID 21924483. S2CID 10762789.
^ Osterhout, L., McLaughlin, J., Kim, A., Greewald, R., & Inoue, K. (2004). Sentences in the brain: Event-related potentials as real-time reflections of sentence comprehension and language learning. In M. Carreiras & C. Clifton (Eds.), The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eyetracking-ERPs, and beyond (pp. 271–308). New York: Psychology Press.
^ ^a ^b Townsend, David J; Thomas G. Bever (2001). Sentence Comprehension: The Integration of Habits and Rules. MIT Press. p. 382. ISBN 978-0-262-70080-1. early left anterior negativity.
^ Hagoort, Peter; C.M. Brown; J. Groothusen (1993). "The syntactic positive shift (SPS) as an ERP measure of syntactic processing". Language and Cognitive Processes. 8 (4): 439–483. doi:10.1080/01690969308407585. hdl:2066/15987.
^ Friederici, Angela; Stefan Frisch (2000). "Verb Argument Structure Processing: The Role of Verb-Specific and Argument-Specific Information". Journal of Memory and Language. 43 (3): 476–507. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2709.
^ Friederici, Angela D.; Karsten Steinhauer; Stefan Frisch (1999). "Lexical integration: Sequential effects of syntactic and semantic information". Memory & Cognition. 27 (3): 439. doi:10.3758/bf03211539. PMID 10355234.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Hahne, Anja; Angela D. Friederici (2002). "Differential task effects on semantic and syntactic processes as revealed by ERPs". Cognitive Brain Research. 13 (3): 340. doi:10.1016/S0926-6410(01)00127-6. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0010-ABA4-1. PMID 11918999.
^ Hagoort, Peter (2003). "Interplay between Syntax and Semantics during Sentence Comprehension: ErP Effects of Combining Syntactic and Semantic Violations". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 15 (6): 883–99. doi:10.1162/089892903322370807. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-18B4-B. PMID 14511541. S2CID 15814199.
^ ^a ^b ^c Ye, Zheng; Yue-jia, Luo; Friederici, Angela D.; Zhou, Xiaolin (2006). "Semantic and syntactic processing in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from event-related potentials". Brain Research. 1071 (1): 186–96. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2005.11.085. PMID 16412999. S2CID 18324338.
^ ^a ^b Hagoort, Peter (2003). "How the brain solves the binding problem for language: a neurocomputational model of syntactic processing". NeuroImage. 20: S18 – S29. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.09.013. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1E0C-2. PMID 14597293. S2CID 18845725.
^ Friederici, Angela D.; Jürgen Weissenborn (2007). "Mapping sentence form onto meaning: The syntax-semantic interface". Brain Research. 1146: 50–8. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.08.038. PMID 16956590. S2CID 14664214.
^ Kim, Albert; Lee Osterhout (2005). "The independence of combinatory semantic processing: Evidence from event-related potentials". Journal of Memory and Language. 52 (2): 206. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.115.4927. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.10.002.
^ ^a ^b Frisch, Stefan; Anja Hahne; Angela D. Friederici (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 196. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895. S2CID 44889189.
^ Frisch, Stefan; Anja Hahne; Angela D. Friederici (2004). "Word category and verb–argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing". Cognition. 91 (3): 191–219. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009. PMID 15168895. S2CID 44889189.