Characterization of Brain Regions Based on Event-related Potentials—N400 Component

Abstract

N400 is a typical event-related potential that reflects the degree of matching between words and context. A public dataset was selected to explore the effect of gender on N400 by performing statistical analysis, spectral analysis, and time-frequency analysis on the EEG of 40 subjects who participated in the lexical semantic relevance judgment task. The results showed that, although the gender difference was not significant, the mean and peak amplitudes of N400 in females were overall larger than those in males, and the latencies were shorter, which proved that the N400 responses of females were overall more sensitive. The time-frequency results showed that theta waves and lowfrequency beta waves were active during the time window when the N400 appeared, reflecting cognitive processing of semantic mismatch. This study provides evidence for the use of the N400 to assess semantic processing, which is informative.