MMN and Differential Waveform

A mismatch negativity response (MMN) and a new differential waveform were derived in an effort to evaluate a neural refractory or recovery effect in adult listeners. The MMN was elicited using oddball test runs in which the standard and deviant stimuli differed in frequency. To derive the differential waveform, the same standard and deviant stimuli were presented alone. MMN responses were obtained by subtracting the averaged responses to standards from the deviants. The differential waveforms were obtained by subtracting the averaged responses to standards presented alone from deviants presented alone. Scalp topography for the MMN and differential waveforms were similar. A significant (p < .05) positive and negative correlation was found between the earlier and later components of the bimodal MMN and the N1 and P2 component of the differential waveform, respectively. Further, N1 and P2 of the differential waveform were significant (p < .05) predictor variables of early and late peak amplitudes of the MMN. These results suggest that refractory effects may overlay/modify the morphology of the MMN waveform

Sensory and cognitive mechanisms of change detection in the context of speech

The aim of this study was to dissociate the contributions of memory-based (cognitive) and adaptation-based (sensory) mechanisms underlying deviance detection in the context of natural speech. Twenty healthy right-handed native speakers of English participated in an event-related design scan in which natural speech stimuli, /de:/ (“deh”) and /deI/ (“day”); (/te:/ (“teh”) and /teI/ (“tay”) served as standards and deviants within functional magnetic resonance imaging event-related “oddball” paradigm designed to elicit the mismatch negativity component. Thus, “oddball” blocks could involve either a word deviant (“day”) resulting in a “word advantage” effect, or a non-word deviant (“deh” or “tay”). We utilized an experimental protocol controlling for refractoriness similar to that used previously when deviance detection was studied in the context of tones. Results showed that the cognitive and sensory mechanisms of deviance detection were located in the anterior and posterior auditory cortices, respectively, as was previously found in the context of tones. The cognitive effect, that was most robust for the word deviant, diminished in the “oddball” condition. In addition, the results indicated that the lexical status of the speech stimulus interacts with acoustic factors exerting a top-down modulation of the extent to which novel sounds gain access to the subject’s awareness through memory-based processes. Thus, the more salient the deviant stimulus is the more likely it is to be released from the effects of adaptation exerted by the posterior auditory cortex

Electrophysiological correlates of selective attention: A lifespan comparison

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To study how event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and underlying cortical mechanisms of selective attention change from childhood to old age, we investigated lifespan age differences in ERPs during an auditory oddball task in four age groups including 24 younger children (9–10 years), 28 older children (11–12 years), 31 younger adults (18–25), and 28 older adults (63–74 years). In the Unattend condition, participants were asked to simply listen to the tones. In the Attend condition, participants were asked to count the deviant stimuli. Five primary ERP components (N1, P2, N2, P3 and N3) were extracted for deviant stimuli under Attend conditions for lifespan comparison. Furthermore, Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and Late Discriminative Negativity (LDN) were computed as difference waves between deviant and standard tones, whereas Early and Late Processing Negativity (EPN and LPN) were calculated as difference waves between tones processed under Attend and Unattend conditions. These four secondary ERP-derived measures were taken as indicators for change detection (MMN and LDN) and selective attention (EPN and LPN), respectively. To examine lifespan age differences, the derived difference-wave components for attended (MMN and LDN) and deviant (EPN and LPN) stimuli were specifically compared across the four age groups.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both primary and secondary ERP components showed age-related differences in peak amplitude, peak latency, and topological distribution. The P2 amplitude was higher in adults compared to children, whereas N2 showed the opposite effect. P3 peak amplitude was higher in older children and younger adults than in older adults. The amplitudes of N3, LDN, and LPN were higher in older children compared with both of the adult groups. In addition, both P3 and N3 peak latencies were significantly longer in older than in younger adults. Interestingly, in the young adult sample P3 peak amplitude correlated positively and P3 peak latency correlated negatively with performance in the Identical Picture test, a marker measure of fluid intelligence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present findings suggest that patterns of event-related brain potentials are highly malleable within individuals and undergo profound reorganization from childhood to adulthood and old age.</p

Neurophysiologic Markers of Abnormal Brain Activity in Schizophrenia

Cortical electrophysiologic event-related potentials are multidimensional measures of information processing that are well-suited for efficiently parsing automatic and controlled components of cognition that span the range of deficits evidenced in schizophrenia patients. These information processes are key cognitive measures that are recognized as informative and valid targets for understanding the neurobiology of schizophrenia. These measures may be used in concert with the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) neurocognitive measures in the development of novel treatments for schizophrenia and related neuropsychiatric disorders. The employment of novel event-related potential paradigms designed to carefully characterize the early spectrum of perceptual and cognitive information processing allows investigators to identify the neurophysiologic basis of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia and to examine the associated clinical and functional impairments

Echoic memory of a single pure tone indexed by change-related brain activity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The rapid detection of sensory change is important to survival. The process should relate closely to memory since it requires that the brain separate a new stimulus from an ongoing background or past event. Given that sensory memory monitors current sensory status and works to pick-up changes in real-time, any change detected by this system should evoke a change-related cortical response. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether the single presentation of a sound is enough to elicit a change-related cortical response, and therefore, shape a memory trace enough to separate a subsequent stimulus.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Under a paradigm where two pure sounds 300 ms in duration and 800 or 840 Hz in frequency were presented in a specific order at an even probability, cortical responses to each sound were measured with magnetoencephalograms. Sounds were grouped to five events regardless of their frequency, 1D, 2D, and 3D (a sound preceded by one, two, or three different sounds), and 1S and 2S (a sound preceded by one or two same sounds). Whereas activation in the planum temporale did not differ among events, activation in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) was clearly greater for the different events (1D, 2D, 3D) than the same event (1S and 2S).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>One presentation of a sound is enough to shape a memory trace for comparison with a subsequent physically different sound and elicits change-related cortical responses in the STG. The STG works as a real-time sensory gate open to a new event.</p

Auditory sensory memory and working memory skills : Association between frontal MMN and performance scores

Objective: Memory is the faculty responsible for encoding, storing and retrieving information, comprising several sub-systems such as sensory memory (SM) and working memory (WM). Some previous studies exclusively using clinical population revealed associations between these two memory systems. Here we aimed at investigating the relation between modality-general WM performance and auditory SM formation indexed by magnetic mismatch negativity (MMN) responses in a healthy population of young adults. Methods: Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded MMN amplitudes to changes related to six acoustic features (pitch, timbre, location, intensity, slide, and rhythm) inserted in a 4-tone sequence in 86 adult participants who were watching a silent movie. After the MEG recordings, participants were administered the WM primary subtests (Spatial Span and Letter Number Sequencing) of Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS). Results: We found significant correlations between frontal MMN amplitudes to intensity and slide deviants and WM performance. In case of intensity, the relation was revealed in all participants, while for slide only in individuals with a musical background. Conclusions: Automatic neural responses to auditory feature changes are increased in individuals with higher visual WM performance. Significance: Conscious WM abilities might be linked to pre-attentive sensory-specific neural skills of prediction and short-term storage of environmental regularities. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Non-linear laws of echoic memory and auditory change detection in humans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The detection of any abrupt change in the environment is important to survival. Since memory of preceding sensory conditions is necessary for detecting changes, such a change-detection system relates closely to the memory system. Here we used an auditory change-related N1 subcomponent (change-N1) of event-related brain potentials to investigate cortical mechanisms underlying change detection and echoic memory.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Change-N1 was elicited by a simple paradigm with two tones, a standard followed by a deviant, while subjects watched a silent movie. The amplitude of change-N1 elicited by a fixed sound pressure deviance (70 dB vs. 75 dB) was negatively correlated with the logarithm of the interval between the standard sound and deviant sound (1, 10, 100, or 1000 ms), while positively correlated with the logarithm of the duration of the standard sound (25, 100, 500, or 1000 ms). The amplitude of change-N1 elicited by a deviance in sound pressure, sound frequency, and sound location was correlated with the logarithm of the magnitude of physical differences between the standard and deviant sounds.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present findings suggest that temporal representation of echoic memory is non-linear and Weber-Fechner law holds for the automatic cortical response to sound changes within a suprathreshold range. Since the present results show that the behavior of echoic memory can be understood through change-N1, change-N1 would be a useful tool to investigate memory systems.</p

Sensory ERP effects in auditory distraction: did we miss the main event?

Event-related potentials (ERPs) offer unique insights into processes related to involuntary attention changes triggered by rare, unpredictably occurring sensory events, that is, distraction. Contrasting ERPs elicited by distracters and frequent standard stimuli in oddball paradigms allowed the formulation of a three-stage model describing distraction-related processing: first, the distracting event is highlighted by a sensory filter. Second, attention is oriented towards the event, and finally, the task-optimal attention set is restored, or task priorities are changed. Although this model summarizes how distracting stimulus information is processed, not much is known about the cost of taking this exceptional route of processing. The present study demonstrates the impact of distraction on sensory processing. Participants performed a Go/NoGo tone-duration discrimination task, with infrequent pitch distracters. In the two parts of the experiment the duration-response mapping was reversed. Contrasts of distracter and standard ERPs revealed higher P3a- and reorienting negativity amplitudes for short than for long tones, independently from response type. To understand the cause of these asymmetries, short vs. long ERP contrasts were calculated. The ERP pattern showed that short standards elicited an attention-dependent offset response, which was abolished for short distracters. That is, the apparent P3a- and RON enhancements were caused by the removal of a task-related attentional sensory enhancement. This shows that the disruption of task-optimal attention set precedes the elicitation of the P3a, which suggests that P3a does not reflect a process driving the initial distraction-related attention change

Fuchsian convex bodies: basics of Brunn--Minkowski theory

The hyperbolic space \H^d can be defined as a pseudo-sphere in the $(d+1)$ Minkowski space-time. In this paper, a Fuchsian group $\Gamma$ is a group of linear isometries of the Minkowski space such that \H^d/\Gamma is a compact manifold. We introduce Fuchsian convex bodies, which are closed convex sets in Minkowski space, globally invariant for the action of a Fuchsian group. A volume can be associated to each Fuchsian convex body, and, if the group is fixed, Minkowski addition behaves well. Then Fuchsian convex bodies can be studied in the same manner as convex bodies of Euclidean space in the classical Brunn--Minkowski theory. For example, support functions can be defined, as functions on a compact hyperbolic manifold instead of the sphere. The main result is the convexity of the associated volume (it is log concave in the classical setting). This implies analogs of Alexandrov--Fenchel and Brunn--Minkowski inequalities. Here the inequalities are reversed

Memory-Based Mismatch Response to Frequency Changes in Rats

Any occasional changes in the acoustic environment are of potential importance for survival. In humans, the preattentive detection of such changes generates the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related brain potentials. MMN is elicited to rare changes (‘deviants’) in a series of otherwise regularly repeating stimuli (‘standards’). Deviant stimuli are detected on the basis of a neural comparison process between the input from the current stimulus and the sensory memory trace of the standard stimuli. It is, however, unclear to what extent animals show a similar comparison process in response to auditory changes. To resolve this issue, epidural potentials were recorded above the primary auditory cortex of urethane-anesthetized rats. In an oddball condition, tone frequency was used to differentiate deviants interspersed randomly among a standard tone. Mismatch responses were observed at 60–100 ms after stimulus onset for frequency increases of 5% and 12.5% but not for similarly descending deviants. The response diminished when the silent inter-stimulus interval was increased from 375 ms to 600 ms for +5% deviants and from 600 ms to 1000 ms for +12.5% deviants. In comparison to the oddball condition the response also diminished in a control condition in which no repetitive standards were presented (equiprobable condition). These findings suggest that the rat mismatch response is similar to the human MMN and indicate that anesthetized rats provide a valuable model for studies of central auditory processing