Can illusory deviant stimuli be used as attentional distractors to record vMMN in a passive three stimulus oddball paradigm?

Abstract

A passive three stimulus oddball paradigm was used to investigate Visual Mismatch Negativity (vMMN) a component of the Event Related Potential (ERP) believed to represent a central pre-attentive change mechanism. Responses to a change in orientation were recorded to monochrome stimuli presented to subjects on a computer screen. One of the infrequent stimuli formed an illusory figure (Kanizsa Square) aimed to capture spatial attention in the absence of an active task. Nineteen electrodes (10-20 system) were used to record the electroencephalogram in fourteen subjects (ten females) mean age 34.5 years. ERPs to all stimuli consisted of a positive negative positive complex recorded maximally over lateral occipital areas. The negative component was greater for deviant and illusory deviant compared to standard stimuli in a time window of 170-190 ms. A P3a component over frontal/central electrodes to the illusory deviant but not to the deviant stimulus suggests the illusory figure was able to capture attention and orientate subjects to the recording. Subtraction waveforms revealed visual discrimination responses at occipital electrodes, which may represent vMMN. In a control study with 13 subjects (11 females; mean age 29.23 years), using an embedded active attention task, we confirmed the existence of an earlier (150-170 ms) and attenuated vMMN. Recordings from an intracranial case study confirmed separation of N1 and discrimination components to posterior and anterior occipital areas, respectively. We conclude that although the illusory figure captured spatial attention in its own right it did not draw sufficient attentional resources from the standard-deviant comparison as revealed when using a concurrent active task.

Visual mismatch negativity and unintentional temporal-context-based prediction in vision

“…To date, this specificity has often been described as "pre-attentive" or "attention-independent", and this notion has been supported by previous studies which demonstrated that visual MMN was not modulated as a function of task difficulty (Heslenfeld, 2003;Pazo-Alvarez et al, 2004a) or direction of attention (Berti, 2011;Winkler et al, 2005). In contrast, however, it has also been reported that visual MMN was modulated as a function of task difficulty (Kimura et al, 2008d; see also Yucel et al, 2007) or direction of attention (Czigler and Sulykos, 2010;Flynn et al, 2009;Kimura et al, 2010d). These results indicate that although the generation of visual MMN is largely automatic, at least some part of the aforementioned predictive processes that underlie visual MMN generation must be sensitive to attentional manipulations.…”

“…The second half of this review discusses the nature of the unintentional temporal-context-based prediction in vision. Here, on the basis of several key findings provided from visual MMN and other prediction-related studies, the nature of the unintentional prediction is discussed in terms of (1) behavioral indicators, (2) cognitive properties, and Schröger, , 2004and Schröger, , 2006Boll and Berti, 2009;Grimm et al, 2009), direction of motion (Amenedo et al, 2007;Hosák et al, 2008;Kremlácek et al, 2006;Lorenzo-Lopéz et al, 2004;PazoAlvarez et al, 2004aPazoAlvarez et al, , 2004bUrban et al, 2008), orientation (Astikainen et al, 2004(Astikainen et al, , 2008Czigler and Pató, 2009;Czigler and Sulykos, 2010;Flynn et al, 2009;Kimura et al, , 2010aKimura et al, , 2010bSulykos and Czigler, 2011), spatial frequency (Heslenfeld, 2003;Kenemans et al, 2003Kenemans et al, , 2008Maekawa et al, 2005Maekawa et al, , 2009Sulykos and Czigler, 2011; for a corresponding magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, see Kogai et al, 2011), contrast/ luminance (Kimura et al, 2008c(Kimura et al, , 2008d(Kimura et al, , 2010c(Kimura et al, , 2010dStagg et al, 2004;Wei et al, 2002), color (Czigler et al, 2002(Czigler et al, , 2004Czigler and Sulykos, 2010;Grimm et al, 2009;…”

Visual mismatch negativity: a predictive coding view

“…The notion that automatic change detection in the visual modality does not operate only at the level of simple sensory features such as color (Czigler et al, 2002, 2004, 2006a; Horimoto et al, 2002; Mazza et al, 2005; Kimura et al, 2006b; Liu and Shi, 2008; Grimm et al, 2009; Thierry et al, 2009; Czigler and Sulykos, 2010; Müller et al, 2010; Mo et al, 2011; Stefanics et al, 2011), line orientation (Astikainen et al, 2004, 2008; Czigler and Pató, 2009; Flynn et al, 2009; Kimura et al, 2009, 2010a, 2006b; Czigler and Sulykos, 2010; Sulykos and Czigler, 2011), or spatial frequency (Heslenfeld, 2003; Kenemans et al, 2003, 2010; Maekawa et al, 2005, 2009; Sulykos and Czigler, 2011), but also at higher cognitive levels, has been supported by several visual MMN studies. Recent studies demonstrated that object-based irregularities are automatically detected by the visual system (Müller et al, 2013), as well as irregular lexical information (Shtyrov et al, 2013).…”

Oblique effect in visual mismatch negativity

“…VMMN could be elicited with simple visual deviances, such as motion direction (Pazo-Alvarez et al, 2004), orientation, spatial frequency (Heslenfeld, 2003), color (Czigler et al, 2002), or shape (Maekawa et al, 2005). Studies utilizing orientation change are relatively numerous (Astikainen et al, 2004, 2008; Czigler and Pató, 2009; Flynn et al, 2009; Kimura et al, 2009, 2010a; Czigler and Sulykos, 2010; Sulykos and Czigler, 2011; Sulykos et al, 2013). …”