Averaged cortical evoked potentials to recognized and non-recognized verbal stimuli.

Averaged evoked potentials (AEPs) to visually presented neutral and emotionally significant words were recorded from the occipital area and vertex in 37 adults with normal vision. In the first experiment all the stimuli presented on the screen with time exposure 200 ms were supraliminal and were easily recognized by the subjects. In the second experiment time exposure of the stimuli was 15 ms. All the subjects were then unable to recognize the stimuli. The AEPs were observed to physically feeble but emotionally significant stimuli. Thus the analysis of semantic properties of the emotional word may take place in the cerebral cortex without its awareness.