Crossmodal processing of environmental sounds and everyday life actions: An ERP study

Mirella Manfredi; Pamella Sanchez Mello de Pinho; Lucas Murrins Marques; Beatriz de Oliveira Ribeiro; Paulo Sergio Boggio

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07937

Crossmodal processing of environmental sounds and everyday life actions: An ERP study

Heliyon. 2021 Sep 6;7(9):e07937. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07937. eCollection 2021 Sep.

Authors

Mirella Manfredi¹, Pamella Sanchez Mello de Pinho², Lucas Murrins Marques², Beatriz de Oliveira Ribeiro², Paulo Sergio Boggio²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
² Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Developmental Disorders Program, Center for Health and Biological Sciences, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Abstract

To investigate the processing of environmental sounds, previous researchers have compared the semantic processing of words and sounds, yielding mixed results. This study aimed to specifically investigate the electrophysiological mechanism underlying the semantic processing of environmental sounds presented in a naturalistic visual scene. We recorded event-related brain potentials in a group of young adults over the presentation of everyday life actions that were either congruent or incongruent with environmental sounds. Our results showed that incongruent environmental sounds evoked both a P400 and an N400 effect, reflecting sensitivity to physical and semantic violations of environmental sounds' properties, respectively. In addition, our findings showed an enhanced late positivity in response to incongruous environmental sounds, probably reflecting additional reanalysis costs. In conclusion, these results indicate that the crossmodal processing of the environmental sounds might require the simultaneous involvement of different cognitive processes.

Keywords: Crossmodal processing; Event-related potentials; Human actions; LP; N400.