Do tone duration changes that elicit the mismatch negativity also affect the preceding middle latency responses?

Abstract

The human brain can automatically detect sound changes. Previous studies have reported that rare sounds presented within a sequence of repetitive sounds elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN) in the absence of attention in the latency range of 100–250 ms. On the other hand, a previous study discovered that occasional changes in sound location enhance the middle latency response (MLR) elicited in the latency range of 10–50 ms. Several studies have reported an increase in the amplitude of the MLR within the frame of oddball paradigms such as frequency and location changes. However, few studies have been conducted on paradigms employing a duration change. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the peak amplitudes of the MLR components are enhanced by a change in duration. Twenty healthy Japanese men (age: 23.9 ± 2.9 years) participated in the present study. We used an oddball paradigm that contained standard stimuli with a duration of 10 ms and deviant stimuli with a duration of 5 ms. The peak amplitudes of the MLR for the deviant stimuli were then compared with those for the standard stimuli. No changes were observed in the peak amplitude of the MLR resulting from a duration change, whereas a definite MMN was elicited. The amplitude of the MLR was increased within the frame of oddball paradigms such as frequency and location changes. By contrast, the amplitude of the MLR was not changed within the duration change oddball paradigm that elicited the MMN.

Differences in Global Functional Connectivity During Sound Location Processing: An Auditory MMN Study

“…Several neuroimaging studies have revealed that deviations in the spatial location of stationary sound sources generated MMN responses, and the stimulus-speci c adaptation (SSA) versus MMN generation potentially being able to clarify the issues of horizontal localization [7][8][9] . Auditory MMN is a widely used ERP component that re ects pre-attentive auditory processing at a latency of about 100-250ms 10 . The neural discriminative response, which is re ected by the MMN, has been used as a tool to study a variety of cognitive disorders in audition.…”