The electrical activity of the brain shows rapid changes associated with Information processing. Waveform components within an event-related brain potential (ERP) triggered by a Stimulus are indicators ofsubsequent perceptual and cognitive processing. A positive wave at about 300 milliseconds (P300) following the presentation ofa Stimulus indicates the activity of categorization while a negative wave at about 400 milliseconds (N400) corresponds with a disruption and possible extension of the categorization process. This "incongruity" wave prompted speculation that similar neural activity might occur in humor. In apilot study one participant showed clear evidence of P300 and N400 over the whole cortex when responding to humorous Stimuli. A subsequent experiment attempted to manipulate the mood of additional subjects prior to the presentation of the humorous Stimuli. ERP activity was used to compare jokes that did or did not elicit laughter. Although the mood manipulation resulted in only weak and inconsistent subjective and behavioral changes, there was some evidence ofcortical changes. More significantly, jokes that did notproduce laughter showed no evidence of the N400 while those that elicited laughter did show this electrical pattern ofdisrupted categorization.Evidence from individuals with injuries to various parts of the brain shows that different areas of the cortex play different roles in mental tasks. The whole cortex, however, seems to be involved to some extent in complex Information processing. A high level skill that requires such complex thought is humor appreciation. Brownell and Gardner (1988) have reported that damage to the right cortical hemisphere leads to an acceptance of any incongruity äs funny.
This poster describes a method of investigating operator alertness through brainwave recordings, specifically the event-related potential (ERP), during a flight simulation experiment. Previous research has used the ERP to monitor operator state during a task, and has identified prominent features in the ERP waveform that are associated with task-irrelevant auditory probe tones which can index subject alertness (Makeig et al., 1992). The primary goal of this method was to explore the possibility that the ERP can gauge the readiness state of a pilot prior to an emergency situation. In the experiment, subjects were instructed to ignore the probe tones which were perceptible above ambient cockpit noise, but were not intrusive to their task. Early sensory components of the ERJ? which reflect sensory/perceptual processing were examined. Results showed that Pl-N1 and Nl-P2 peak amplitude differences were attenuated (p < .Ol) prior to the aircraft malfunction as compared to their baseline measurement, and that P2 peak amplitude was enhanced (p < .05) during baseline measurement for those subjects in an artificial intelligence fault detection system condition as compared to those subjects in the standard aircraft caution and warning system condition.The display of summary information to the commander during combat is an important requirement for future mobile command and control systems. Configural displays use emergent properties of shape and proportion to represent the state of real world processes. The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate configural concepts for the display of complex tactical situations. We developed configural display concepts that used the vertical axis to depict the temporal location of maneuver units as they progressed towards their military objectives. This was contrasted with the horizontal axis which depicted overall combat effectiveness. Both indices used the difference between planned and actual states to form rectangular representations of the current tactical situation. Seventeen Army officers made tactical decisions and situation assessments under different display conditions. Decisions using the configural display were both faster and more accurate than decisions based on conventional graphical and alphanumeric formats.Based on these results, we developed more complex configural representations. These displays depict historical trends and future extrapolations of movement rate and combat effectiveness for each of the commander's units. We concluded that complex configural representations are an efficient means of giving division and corps commanders a readily understandable mosaic of the overall battlefield situation. We also concluded that more research was needed to understand the individual contributions and interrelationship of the various coding schemes such as color and shape to the overall effectiveness of the configural formats.
Poor spellers and good spellers were tested to see if specific verbal disabilities were associated with anomalous patterns of cerebral dominance. Hemispheric dominance for speech was assessed by latency for recognition of unilaterally presented letter pairs. Poor spellers did not differ from good spellers in patterns of cerebral dominance, but they had longer latencies when responding with the preferred (right) hand than with the left hand, or than the good spellers with either hand.Sensation and motor control for any area of the body have been attributed to the contralateral cerebral cortex (Mountcastle, 1962). The control of speech functions has been associated with the dominant hemisphere of the brain, the hemisphere contralateral to the preferred hand (White, 1969). Orton (1928) concluded that some speech defects were caused by improperly developed . patterns of dominance and handedness. He found numerous cases in which specific verbal dysfunctions were accompanied by incomplete development of handedness or indications of anomalous development of cerebral dominance. From this it was hypothesized that persons who demonstrate specific verbal dysfunctions would also show dominance anomalies. It was predicted that if subjects with verbal dysfunction and normal subjects were tested for locus of speech control in the cerebral cortex, the two groups would differ in that the normal group would show indication of speech control in the left hemisphere while the verbal dysfunction group would show diffuse control.In the present study, poor spelling ability was selected as the specific verbal dysfunction because it is easy to diagnose, and it occurs with reasonable frequency in a college population. The method followed Egeth and Epstein (1972) and was based on the theory that the verbal hemisphere of the brain is specialized, for judgments of "same," and the nonverbal hemisphere is specialized for judgments of "different." Thus, judgment of a pair of letters, both identical, presented in the right visual field (RVF) should be faster than if they were presented to the left visual field (LVF), because the projection of the RVF is solely to the left hemisphere. Most researchers (Duane, Note 1) have found a clear RVF superiority for "same" stimulus pairs and a LVF superiority for "different" stimulus pairs. METHODA ~otal of 12 subjects took part in this experiment, six male and SIX female. ~ll. subjects were drawn from the population of the College of William and Mary in Virginia (undergraduate .and graduate students and faculty). The subjects in the experimental group were selected on the basis of self-reported poor spelling. The control group was made up of self-reported good spellers. 483The stimuli were pairs of letters arranged one above the other and separated by a distance that subtended a visual angle of about 3 deg when viewed from the standard viewing distance of 30 cm. Each pair was located either to the left or to the right of ftxation, a distance that subtended a visual angle of 5 deg. Stimuli consisted of 18 p...
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