Psychophysiological measures hold great potential for informing clinical assessments. The challenge, before such measures can be widely used, is to develop test procedures and analysis strategies that allow for statistically reliable and valid decisions to be made for any particular examinee, despite large individual differences in psychophysiological responding. Focusing on the evaluation of memory in clinical, criminal, and experimental contexts, this paper reviews the rationale for and development of ERP-based memory assessment procedures, with a focus on methods that allow for statistically supported decisions to be made in the case of a single examinee. The application of one such procedure to the study of amnesia in Dissociative Identity Disorder is highlighted. To facilitate the development of other psychophysiological assessment tools, psychophysiological researchers are encouraged to report the sensitivity and specificity of their measures where possible.

This study aimed to identify different processes in working memory, using event-related potentials (ERPs) and response times. Abstract polygons were presented for memorization and subsequent recall in a delayed matching-to-sample paradigm. Two polygons were presented bilaterally for memorization and a cue indicated whether one (and if so, which one of the two) or both polygons had to be memorized. A subsequent test figure was presented unilaterally to the left or right visual field and had to be compared with the memorized figure(s). ERP results suggested that memorization takes place in a visual buffer in contralateral posterior brain areas, whereas identification of the test stimulus as a target appears to be mainly a left hemispheric process. Increased response times were found for nontarget test stimuli as compared to targets, and for target test stimuli that were presented contralaterally with respect to the location of the memorized stimulus. In addition, response times were slower when two figures were memorized than when only one was memorized.

A heartbeat detection task, based on the method of constant stimuli (MCS), requires participants to judge which of a series of tones presented at different delays following a heartbeat are coincident with the heartbeat. Two experiments were conducted to test the validity of the MCS in assessing individual differences in the ability to detect heartbeat sensations. The first experiment found the MCS to be valid, in that about one-third of subjects met the criterion for classification as heartbeat detectors when the tones were presented with respect to their actual heartbeats, but only one subject met the criterion when the tones were presented with respect to previously recorded heartbeats. The second experiment manipulated the timing of the comparison intervals (i.e., R + 100–600 ms rather than R + 0–500 ms) to examine the validity of the median R-wave to tone interval as an index of temporal location of perceived heartbeats, and found it to be a valid index.

This study investigated the role and time-course of phonology in accessing meaning during silent reading. In Experiment 1, the homophone effect was replicated in a semantic categorization task in French. When deciding whether a stimulus belonged to a semantic category (FOOD), subjects made more errors to homophones (MEET) than to orthographic controls (MELT). In Experiment 2, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to study the online development of this effect. If access to meaning was mediated by phonology, smaller N400 components should be obtained to homophones than to orthographic controls. The ERP data exhibited a full-blown N400 component to homophones that did not differ from the N400 to controls. No differences between homophones and controls were found before the N400. After the N400, however, homophones differed from controls, with ERPs to homophones being similar to those of correct category exemplars. The results suggest that the final selection of a word's meaning does not depend on its phonological form. This result is incompatible with a strong phonological view according to which the only way to meaning is via a word's phonology.

Physiological response stereotypy is a well-established psychophysiological construct. Unfortunately, specifying parameters of tasks that evoke differing physiological responses has proved difficult. We have recorded cardiovascular activity while subjects carried out executive and attentional tasks that differed not only psychologically but also in their sensitivity to brain pathology and to pharmacological manipulations. Finapres recordings were made of 30 healthy, normal subjects (mean age 24 years) performing two tasks involving differing aspects of sustained attention and two tasks involving differing aspects of spatial working memory and planning. Measures of heart rate and blood pressure, heart rate and blood pressure variability, and their spectral derivatives revealed differing patterns of cardiovascular adjustment between the “attentional” and “planning” tasks. Each test raised blood pressure, but changes in blood pressure and heart rate variability were confined to the attentional tasks. These findings suggest distinct brain mechanisms subserving different forms of arousal.

We describe a method, based on recordings of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye movement potentials (electrooculogram), to track where on a screen (x, y coordinates) an individual is fixating. The method makes use of an empirically derived beam-forming filter (derived from a sequence of calibrated eye movements) to isolate eye motion from other electrophysiological and ambient electrical signals. Electrophysiological researchers may find this method a simple and inexpensive means of tracking eye movements and a useful complement to scalp recordings in studies of cognitive phenomena. The resolution is comparable to that of many commercial systems; the method can be implemented with as few as four electrodes around the eyes to complement the EEG electrodes already in use. This method may also find some specialized applications such as studying eye movements during sleep and in human–machine interfaces that make use of gaze information.

In two experiments, event-related brain potentials were recorded to word pairs simultaneously presented to both ears, with instructions to attend to one ear and detect occasional nonwords in that ear. This attentional manipulation yielded four patterns of word repetition on successive trials: first and second presentations attended (AA), both unattended (UU), and across ears (AU and UA). A prominent attenuation of N400 due to immediate repetition of words was observed on AA trials. However, when first presentations were ignored on UU and UA trials, no repetition effect was obtained. These findings indicate that the repetition effect on N400 depends on attentional processing of first presentations.

The study of motor slowness based on observational methods has limitations. Whether motor retardation has a psychomotor or neuromotor basis is unclear because psychiatric and motor symptoms overlap. Observational methods lack the precision necessary to distinguish cognitive from motor processes. For the present study, we used an objective measure of neuromotor dysfunction to quantify the extent to which an individual programs movement velocity in anticipation of increasing target distance. Persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) or functional psychosis were studied with a group of healthy comparison subjects. Results indicated that the slope of the linear function relating velocity to distance was abnormal in the PD group and in approximately half of the psychosis group. Analyses revealed the measure to have high specificity and sensitivity. Weak correlations between velocity scaling and psychopathology support the neuromotor basis of the measure. We conclude that this measure of velocity scaling is relatively uninfluenced by cognitive factors that may underlie psychomotor retardation.

Disturbances in processing simple acoustic changes in a stream of stimuli have been widely reported in patients with schizophrenia, but little is know about auditory feature conjunction in these individuals. This study was designed to examine the extent to which patients with schizophrenia automatically process changes in conjunction of auditory features by using event-related brain potentials. Seventeen patients and 17 age-matched controls were presented with frequent low pitch tones at 45° to the left of center and frequent high pitch tones at 45° to the right of center while performing a continuous visual serial-choice reaction time task. The sequence of auditory stimuli included rare conjunction-deviants comprised of a different combination of features (e.g., low pitch tone at 45° right) and double-deviant tones that differed from the standard tones in both pitch and location (i.e., middle pitch at 0° azimuth). Conjunction-deviant stimuli elicited an MMN wave that was maximum at frontocentral sites. Compared with controls, the MMN to conjunction-deviant was reduced in patients and was more centrally distributed. Double-deviant sounds generated a biphasic MMN followed by a P3a wave at central sites. Both MMN and P3a were reduced in patients compared with controls. These results show that patients with schizophrenia have difficulty in automatically detecting changes in a combination of auditory features as well as orienting to what “normally” would be considered salient by healthy individuals.

Strained breathing is a natural respiratory pattern, with cardiovascular implications. It is associated with social factors, attention, expectation, and anxiety and with defense behavior in animals. An inhibition of active behavior is characteristic. Strained breathing is based on the functional heterogeneity of the medullary postinspiratory neurons. In stressful circumstances, muscle tension and laryngeal reflexes induce a strong reduction of airflow in the glottis, resulting in a prolonged Stage I of expiration and an elevated intrathoracic pressure. The resulting elevations of blood pressure and CO2 level further stimulate the strained breathing pattern. The straining factor intrathoracic pressure is an important psychophysiological parameter. Functional aspects of strained breathing may be an elevated brain perfusion and the prevention of hyperventilation. It induces blood pressure oscillations and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Frequent strained breathing may contribute to cardiovascular pathology and sleep apnea, creating a link between functional behavior and disease.

The study of motor slowness based on observational methods has limitations. Whether motor retardation has a psychomotor or neuromotor basis is unclear because psychiatric and motor symptoms overlap. Observational methods lack the precision necessary to distinguish cognitive from motor processes. For the present study, we used an objective measure of neuromotor dysfunction to quantify the extent to which an individual programs movement velocity in anticipation of increasing target distance. Persons with Parkinson's disease (PD) or functional psychosis were studied with a group of healthy comparison subjects. Results indicated that the slope of the linear function relating velocity to distance was abnormal in the PD group and in approximately half of the psychosis group. Analyses revealed the measure to have high specificity and sensitivity. Weak correlations between velocity scaling and psychopathology support the neuromotor basis of the measure. We conclude that this measure of velocity scaling is relatively uninfluenced by cognitive factors that may underlie psychomotor retardation.

The aim of the present study was the comparative assessment of the 4-week test-retest stabilities of the saccadic CNV (sCNV) and saccadic reaction times (SRT) during the execution of pro- and antisaccades, as well as the stability of RT during execution of two neuropsychological tests of alertness and S-R incompatibility. Prosaccades were elicited under the 200-ms gap and overlap conditions, antisaccades under the overlap condition (64 trials each). The EEG was recorded from 25 channels with a DC amplifier (MES, Munich). Data of 20 healthy participants were statistically analyzed. We found high test-retest correlations for all SRT (.76 ≤ rtt ≤ .88) and neuropsychological (.62 ≤ rtt ≤ .88) measures. For the sCNV, coefficients ranging between .58 (pro/gap) and .77 (anti/overlap) were obtained. Whereas SRT were significantly faster during the second than during the first session, group means for the saccadic CNV were stable across the sessions. Our results suggest high 4-week stability of individual differences in SRT, and moderate to good stabilities of saccadic CNV amplitudes. Our results recommend these “traitlike” measures to be used in individual differences research.

A fundamental question in attention theory concerns the earliest processing stages that can be modulated by selective attention. A series of experiments is reported in which very early attention effects are found under specific conditions in the frequency-following potential (FFP), a brain stem response to low-frequency tone stimuli. In two experiments, stimuli of two different modalities were applied, and attention directed to one of the modalities. In two further experiments, only auditory stimuli were presented. In the first of these last two experiments, a dichotic paradigm with sustained attention to one ear was used, in the second a monotic paired-stimuli paradigm was used, in which the first stimulus served as reference for the second one. Only in the last experiment significant attention effects were found in the latency, but not in the amplitude of the FFP. The results show that a very early attention effect on the latency of the FFP can be demonstrated, but only under highly specific conditions. The size and preconditions of the attention effect suggest that it reflects subtle intramodal tuning mechanisms in the cochlea or in the lower brain stem.

Evoked and induced magnetic brain activity measured over the left hemisphere were tested for their specificity to language-related processing. Induced activity refers to oscillatory alterations time locked but not phase locked to the stimulus. Words, false font stimuli, and two types of nonverbal patterns were presented visually while subjects performed a nonlinguistic visual feature detection task. The comparison of evoked and induced brain activity around 200 ms after stimulus onset revealed differential sensitivity to the stimuli. The M180 component of the evoked magnetic field was larger at the processing of words and false font stimuli compared with nonverbal stimuli. The induced magnetic brain activity in the 60-Hz band at a compatible latency range was correlated with the familiarity of the visual Gestalt. Sensitivity to language-specific information processing can be concluded if a parameter differentiates the word condition from the nonlexical conditions. Such a difference was observed at sensors located over the frontal-temporal scalp regions for induced but not evoked magnetic brain activity. Thus, evoked and induced magnetic brain activity revealed a differential sensitivity to elements of cognitive processing during the given task.

Research studies have found that smooth pursuit eye movement dysfunction may serve as an index of genetic liability to develop schizophrenia. The heritability of various measures of smooth pursuit eye tracking proficiency and the saccades that occur during smooth pursuit was examined in 64 monozygotic (MZ) and 48 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. Two age cohorts were assessed (11–12 and 17–18 years of age). Intraclass correlations indicated significant similarity in the MZ twins for almost all measures in both age cohorts, whereas few of the DZ twin correlations attained significance. Biometrical modeling indicated that genetic mechanisms influence performance on both global and specific eye tracking measures, accounting for about 40% to 60% of the variance. These findings suggest that the underlying brain systems responsible for smooth pursuit and saccade generation during pursuit are under partial genetic control.

Results obtained with the standard repetition-change paradigm of orienting research cannot be attributed unambiguously to either stimulus change or to unexpectedness. By adding announcement conditions, in which participants were told about an impending stimulus change, these two factors were disentangled. In Experiment 1, reaction times (RTs) were longer and ratings of surprise were higher with unannounced than with announced stimulus change. In contrast, larger skin conductance response (SCR) magnitudes occurred following change, irrespective of its congruence with participants' expectations. Experiment 2 replicated the results for SCR magnitude and, furthermore, revealed the same pattern of results for the evoked cardiac response. Surprise ratings again reflected the unexpectedness of stimulus presentations. The dissociation between RT and autonomic measures provides difficulties for resource allocation accounts of the orienting response.

The effects of auditory spatial attention on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were examined in situations that promoted stream segregation. Short and long noise bursts were presented at three azimuth locations and listeners were asked to respond to the longer sounds occurring at either the right- or left-most location. In the baseline condition, the three sound sources were evenly spaced apart. In the distractor clustering conditions, middle and far sounds were clustered. In the attended clustering conditions, middle and attended sounds were clustered. ERP indices of attention, isolated as negative difference (Nd) waves, were greater over the hemisphere contralateral to the attended location. Nd waves were also larger when the middle sounds were moved toward the far distractors, consistent with an object-based gradient of auditory attention in which higher order information provided by the perceptual context influences selective processing.

We investigated whether previously observed inhibition of pericranial electromyographic (EMG) activity, respiration, and heart rate during sensory intake processes improves auditory sensitivity. Participants had to detect weak auditory stimuli. We found that EMG activity in masticatory and lower facial muscles, respiration, and heart rate were more strongly inhibited when stimulus intensity was gradually lowered to threshold level whereas EMG of upper facial muscles progressively increased. Detection of near-threshold stimuli was inversely related to prestimulus EMG levels in masticatory and lower facial muscles. In two additional experiments, it was investigated whether steady, voluntary contractions negatively influence auditory sensitivity. As expected, contraction of zygomaticus produced an increase in auditory threshold in comparison with contraction of corrugator or first dorsal interosseus. It is concluded that attention to external stimuli is accompanied by quieting of those somatic activities that produce internal noise or are accompanied by impaired middle ear transmission of auditory stimuli.

Norepinephrine is believed to modulate CNS processing of environmental signals. However, its specific role in stimulus evaluation processes has not been delineated. We examined the effects of the α2 noradrenergic agents, clonidine and yohimbine, on ERP and performance measures of auditory information processing. Ten healthy participants performed a three-tone target detection experiment, receiving either placebo, 0.2 mg clonidine, or 30 mg yohimbine, in a double-blind randomized design. The principal locus of action of the noradrenergic agents occurred between 100 and 200 ms poststimulus. P200 latency was sped by yohimbine and slowed by clonidine, and the frontal P3a was shifted in tandem. Components related to target detection (N250 and P3b) were unaffected. The results suggest that norepinephrine modulates CNS mechanisms of selective attention to infrequent stimuli. This may be relevant for patients with schizophrenia, a subset of whom exhibit selective abnormalities of these same ERP components. Our results offer a possible link between these two sets of findings, suggesting that some patients with schizophrenia may have dysfunctional noradrenergic systems.

The effect of attention allocation on smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) was investigated. Eye movements were electrooculographically recorded in 27 healthy subjects who tracked a visual target that moved horizontally with constant or unpredictably varying velocity. In some trials, subjects performed additional auditory discrimination tasks varying in difficulty. Pursuit error decreased when attention was divided between both tasks. The pattern of results is incompatible with the assumption made in previous research that attention enhancement improves SPEM accuracy. Rather, ocular smooth pursuit appears to be executed in the automatic mode, although intentional and selective processes must contribute. Moreover, controlled attention directed to the tracking task interfered with smooth pursuit. A reinterpretation of earlier studies in which visual monitoring tasks were used to improve eye tracking is needed.