Event-related Potentials in Audio–Visual Cross-Modal Test for Comparison of Word Pairs

Abstract: The study was aimed at investigating specificities of brain functioning when comparing verbal signals in cross-modal interaction. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 166 healthy subjects in a two-modal, two-stimulus test in the GO–NOGO paradigm where the first stimulus was a visual presentation of the word, and the second stimulus was an auditory presentation of the word. It was shown that while the subjects were waiting for the spoken word to follow the printed word, an activation was recorded in the frontal-temporal area of their left hemisphere (F7, F3), presumably associated with the formation of the word’s phonological representation in the memory. Upon producing the second (spoken) word if it coincides with the visual presentation, the peak activation is recorded in the posterior temporal positions (Т5, Т6) within the interval of 370–500 ms; if the second stimulus does not coincide with the first one, the peak activation is recorded in the occipital positions (O1, O2) within the interval of 590–800 ms. These ERP fluctuations supposedly result from the processes of comparing the newly received auditory information with the phonological representation of the word stored in the working memory. © 2021, Pleiades Publishing, Inc.