Contextual Impairments in Schizophrenia and the FN400

N400 in language), it has been suggested (Kutas and Federmeier, 2011) that the classical N400 and the FN400 could be indexing an analog process. In our view, both proposals are justified and can explain, in a more parsimonious fashion, current FN400-related data. However, based on the possible functional analogy between the FN400 and the N400 and also on current neuroanatomical evidence suggesting frontal and temporal sources (Halgren et al., 2002; Voss et al., 2008; Ibanez et al., 2012), we propose that this component might be reflecting a more general process regarding implicit contextual facilitation. We have recently proposed that the N400 reflects the activation of a contextual frontotemporal network responsible for the instantiation of meaning construction under the crucial role of context-based information (Amoruso et al., 2011; Ibanez and Manes, 2012). In our model, similar to the one proposed by Bar (2004) for object recognition, frontal regions would play a key role in updating ongoing contextual information in working memory and integrating it with semantic knowledge about target-context associations and their learning value stored in temporal regions. Taken together, information about current and previous experiences is used by the brain in order to make focused predictions to facilitate the interpretation of the ongoing situation. Furthermore, our model is supported by current experimental evidence from electrocorticography (ECoG) direct recordings (Ibanez et al., 2012) and source estimation (Halgren et al., 2002) which suggests that the scalp-recorded N400 reflects the coordinated activity of multiple brain areas, Contextual impairments in schizophrenia and the FN400