Detecting violation in abstract pitch patterns with mismatch negativity

Abstract

The human brain automatically extracts regularities embedded in environmental auditory events. This study investigated the extraction of abstract patterns by measuring mismatch negativity (MMN). Participants watched a silent subtitled movie and ignored a sequence of auditory events comprising frequent standards and rare deviants presented in the background. Tone triplets with varying pitch (first-order property) served as the auditory events. The pitch intervals (interval 1 and interval 2) between the tones in a triplet and the ratio of interval 1 and 2 were considered second- and third-order properties, respectively. Both second- and third-order properties of the standards were kept constant in the mixed patterns block, while only the third-order property was kept constant in the ratio pattern block. Four sets of tone triplets violating the interval and ratio patterns with different deviance levels were presented as deviants in both blocks, and subtracted with physically identical stimuli in a control block to isolate the MMNs. Interval and ratio pattern deviants elicited MMNs in the mixed patterns block while only ratio pattern deviants elicited MMNs in the ratio pattern block. Larger MMNs were elicited by large deviants as compared to small deviants. These results suggest that the change detection system is sensitive to the violation of both second- and third-order abstract patterns. In addition to regularities in the abstract properties of auditory events, regularities in the relationships between abstract properties can also be extracted. This ability plays an important role in music and language perception.

The critical role of the inferior frontal cortex in establishing a prediction model for generating subsequent mismatch negativity (MMN): A TMS-EEG study

“…Specifically, TMS on the IFC 80 ms after stimuli onset was applied at the first 2 or 5 positions of standard trains with different train lengths, while the MMN responses to the deviants presented after the standard trains were recorded. Previous studies found MMN response to the deviant when the deviant was preceded by at least 2 standards [29][30][31][32][33], and increase in MMN amplitude with longer standard trains [34]. These results indicate the importance of accumulating information from the standards for eliciting the MMN.…”

Functional connectivity of the frontotemporal network in preattentive detection of abstract changes: Perturbs and observes with transcranial magnetic stimulation and event‐related optical signal

“…The interevent interval is equivalent to the intertrial interval as each trial was consisted of one auditory event. Previous studies (Bidelman & Chung, ; Denham, Gyimesi, Stefanics, & Winkler, ; Mittag, Takegata, & Winkler, ; Sable et al, ; Sable, Gratton, & Fabiani, ; Sussman, Gomes, Nousak, Ritter, & Vaughan, ; Xiao et al, ) demonstrated perceptual grouping of tones with similar spectral and temporal properties.…”

“…While the absolute pitches of the tones (i.e., a physical feature) varied among the events, the regularity of the standard events could only be established by the relative pitch difference between the first and second tone (i.e., an abstract feature), but not by the absolute pitches of the tones. The regularity or prediction violation account of preattentive change detection was further demonstrated by MMNs to the violation of an abstract regularity pattern established not only by a constant abstract relationship between physical features, but also by a constant abstract relationship between abstract features, among the standard events (Xiao et al, ).…”

“…The human brain is able to detect environmental changes automatically, which is also known as preattentive change detection. Not only simple physical changes but also changes that violate invariant relationships between events in the environment can be detected (Paavilainen, ; Winkler, ; Xiao et al, ). Current theories (Friston, , , ; Winkler, ) suggest a mechanism that involves extracting the regularity or rule from the environment for making prediction of future events.…”

“…The pitch interval rule was violated by deviant events with reduced pitch intervals. Larger deviance from the expected or standard pitch interval would elicit a stronger MMN response (Xiao et al, ). Although the EROS STC mismatch response to abstract changes has not been investigated, larger deviance in the physical feature had been consistently shown to elicit a stronger EROS STC mismatch response previously (e.g., Tse et al, ; Tse & Penney, ).…”