Epidural Auditory Event-Related Potentials in the Rat to Frequency and duration Deviants: Evidence of Mismatch Negativity?

Abstract

The capacity of the human brain to detect deviance in the acoustic environment pre-attentively is reflected in a brain event-related potential (ERP), mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN is observed in response to the presentation of rare oddball sounds that deviate from an otherwise regular pattern of frequent background standard sounds. While the primate and cat auditory cortex (AC) exhibit MMN-like activity, it is unclear whether the rodent AC produces a deviant response that reflects deviance detection in a background of regularities evident in recent auditory stimulus history or differential adaptation of neuronal responses due to rarity of the deviant sound. We examined whether MMN-like activity occurs in epidural AC potentials in awake and anesthetized rats to high and low frequency and long and short duration deviant sounds. ERPs to deviants were compared with ERPs to common standards and also with ERPs to deviants when interspersed with many different standards to control for background regularity effects. High frequency (HF) and long duration deviant ERPs in the awake rat showed evidence of deviance detection, consisting of negative displacements of the deviant ERP relative to ERPs to both common standards and deviants with many standards. The HF deviant MMN-like response was also sensitive to the extent of regularity in recent acoustic stimulation. Anesthesia in contrast resulted in positive displacements of deviant ERPs. Our results suggest that epidural MMN-like potentials to HF sounds in awake rats encode deviance in an analogous manner to the human MMN, laying the foundation for animal models of disorders characterized by disrupted MMN generation, such as schizophrenia.

Auditory cortical and hippocampal local-field potentials to frequency deviant tones in urethane-anesthetized rats: An unexpected role of the sound frequencies themselves

“…Furthermore, similarly to MMN (Jacobsen and Schröger, 2001), differential brain responses in animals have been attributed to deviant tones as changes in the repetitiveness of a standard tone rather than as rare tones relative to the standard tone (e.g., Ruusuvirta et al, 1998;Nakamura et al, 2011;Taaseh et al, 2011;Jung et al, 2013;Shiramatsu et al, 2013;Harms et al, 2014;Malmierca et al, 2014). Together, these findings suggest that the mechanisms for automatic auditory change detection are not limited to the human brain.…”

“…Deviant tones also elicit differential brain responses (higher-amplitude brain responses to deviant than standard tones) in awake (e.g., Javitt et al, 1994;Ruusuvirta et al, 1995Ruusuvirta et al, , 2010Pincze et al, 2001), sleeping (e.g., Csépe et al, 1987) and anesthetized (e.g., Kraus et al, 1994;Ruusuvirta et al, 1996;Ahmed et al, 2011;Astikainen et al, 2011;Nakamura et al, 2011;Tikhonravov et al, 2008) animals (for negative findings in anesthetized rats see, however, Erikson & Villa, 2005;Lazar & Metherate, 2003). Furthermore, similarly to MMN (Jacobsen and Schröger, 2001), differential brain responses in animals have been attributed to deviant tones as changes in the repetitiveness of a standard tone rather than as rare tones relative to the standard tone (e.g., Ruusuvirta et al, 1998;Nakamura et al, 2011;Taaseh et al, 2011;Jung et al, 2013;Shiramatsu et al, 2013;Harms et al, 2014;Malmierca et al, 2014).…”

Validation of mismatch negativity and P3a for use in multi-site studies of schizophrenia: Characterization of demographic, clinical, cognitive, and functional correlates in COGS-2

“…Prominent SZ related deficits are evident in medial frontal brain regions (Rissling et al, in press; Takahashi et al, 2012). MMN is a sensitive index of N- methyl D-aspartate (Ehrlichman et al, 2008; Gil-da-Costa et al, 2013; Javitt et al, 1996; Lavoie et al, 2007; Nakamura et al, 2011; Umbricht et al, 2002; Umbricht et al, 2000) and nicotinic (Baldeweg et al, 2006; Dulude et al, 2010; Dunbar et al, 2007; Engeland et al, 2002; Inami et al, 2005; Inami et al, 2007; Martin et al, 2009; Preskorn et al, 2014) receptor functioning.…”

Passive exposure to speech sounds induces long-term memory representations in the auditory cortex of adult rats

“…Modulation of MMN23242526 and SSA272829 in response to changes in pure tone frequency, syllables, and other complex stimuli are reported in the auditory cortex, as well as in subcortical structures in the auditory pathway (MMN30 and SSA3132, for a review, see33). …”