The EEG/ERP technologies in linguistic research

An essay on the advantages they offer and a survey of their purveyors

Brigitte Stemmer | Centre de Recherche, Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), Université de Montréal

John F. Connolly | Department of Linguistics and Languages, McMaster University

The field of neuroimaging has experienced a tremendous boom due to technological advances in the last ten years and this is also reflected in the electroencephalography / event-related potentials (EEG/ERP) method. This contribution provides an overview of the main EEG/ERP hardware systems and software development currently on the market and the benefits of such technology for the study of language issues. We discuss the “added-value” such technology brings to the research of language and the possibilities of combining various neuroimaging techniques with emphasis on the integration of EEG/ERP and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our contribution ends with a look at what we think may be the methodologies that drive the field forward in the not too distant future.

Published online: 12 December 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.47.16ste