Abstract

Introduction: Language understanding depends on several processes, including lexical recognition. According to the connectionist model, this recognition is generated by activation through the matching of accumulated information and by the inhibition of lexical entries that compete for activation. Objective: To determine, through electrophysiological measurements of event-related potentials (ERP), temporal and spatial processing differences between lexical inconsistencies semantically related to a sentence linguistic context and those that are unrelated. Materials and methods: ERPs were measured in 10 healthy subjects by means of a 240 Spanish sentences paradigm grouped as follows: 80 congruent sentences, 80 sentences with lexical incongruities, and 80 with non-lexical incongruities. Results: A statistical difference was found in the latency of appearance of the N400 component between both conditions. On the other hand, a greater activation of the precuneus, the orbitofrontal gyrus, the angular gyrus and the supramarginal gyrus was observed in the non-lexical incongruity condition. Conclusion: There are temporal and spatial (activation of the precuneus, the orbitofrontal gyrus, the angular gyrus and the supramarginal gyrus) differences between the processing of lexical inconsistencies and the processing of non-lexical inconsistencies.