Citation

Ledwidge PS, Jones CM, Huston CA, Trenkamp M, Bator B, Laeng J. Brain Lang. 2022; 233: e105166.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Academic Press)

DOI

10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105166

PMID

35970083

Abstract

Language deficits and alterations to the N400 ERP are commonly reported in aphasia and moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), but have seldomly been investigated after mild TBI, such as concussion. In the present study, the N400 was recorded from young adults within 1-month after concussion and matched controls during a sentence processing task. The N400 recorded to semantically incongruent sentence-final words was significantly more negative and with a more anterior distribution in the concussion group than control group. Among the concussion group, a weaker N400 was associated with more concussion symptoms, slower response time, and poorer executive functioning. Multiple regression results showed that concussion occurrence and male gender were independently associated with a more negative N400-effect, whereas symptoms were associated with a weaker N400. These findings provide novel evidence that alterations to lexical-semantic networks may occur after concussion and vary based on individual differences in post-concussion symptoms and cognitive function.

Language: en

Keywords

Concussion; Language; Traumatic brain injury; EEG; ERP; Lexical-semantics; N400