Visual mismatch negativity: a predictive coding view

Abstract

An increasing number of studies investigate the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) or use the vMMN as a tool to probe various aspects of human cognition. This paper reviews the theoretical underpinnings of vMMN in the light of methodological considerations and provides recommendations for measuring and interpreting the vMMN. The following key issues are discussed from the experimentalist's point of view in a predictive coding framework: (1) experimental protocols and procedures to control “refractoriness” effects; (2) methods to control attention; (3) vMMN and veridical perception.

Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): A review and meta-analysis of studies in psychiatric and neurological disorders

“…However, this study used a paradigm where participants were attending the stimuli, and they were instructed to indicate the "deviant" stimulus by a button press. Thus the stimuli eliciting the MMN were also taskrelevant, which renders interpretation of the results ambiguous, as differential activity observed in this study might be related to predictive processes, attention, or executive processes (for the role of attention in the vMMN generation, see Czigler, 2007;Stefanics et al, 2014).…”

“…More recent research has focused on the corresponding paradigm in the visual domain using the visual MMN Farkas, Stefanics, Marosi, & Csukly, 2015;Urban, Kremlacek, Masopust, & Libiger, 2008). According to an increasingly popular interpretation, the auditory and visual MMN represent a prediction error response generated by cortical mechanisms forming probabilistic representations of sensory signals (Friston, 2010;Stefanics et al, 2014). MMN deficits are one of the features in schizophrenia that indicate severe abnormalities in fundamental brain processes of prediction and inference (Corlett et al, 2007;Friston, Stephan, Montague, & Dolan, 2014;Stephan et al, 2006).…”

“…Another important point to consider is using a proper control condition (for a review, see Stefanics et al, 2014). Studies using an oddball paradigm often record a so-called "reverse-block" where probabilities of the stimuli that served as frequent standard and rare deviant are reversed, which allows comparing responses to physically identical stimuli Fig.…”

“…Adaptation has been observed in electrophysiological studies throughout the visual system including the retina (Hosoya, Baccus, & Meister, 2005), thalamus (Solomon, Peirce, Dhruv, & Lennie, 2004), superior colliculus (Boehnke et al, 2011), and several cortical areas (Kaliukhovich & Vogels, 2014;Kremlacek et al, 2007;Meyer, Ramachandran, & Olson, 2014;Motter, 2006;Mü ller, Metha, Krauskopf, & Lennie, 1999;Ramachandran, Meyer, & Olson, 2016; for a review, see Vogels, in press). Although the exact relationship of adaptation at different levels of the visual processing hierarchy to change detection as observed in vMMN studies (e.g., Kimura et al, 2011;Stefanics et al, 2014) is not clear, there is general agreement that the function of adaptation is to match response properties of the sensory system to the current environment (Clifford et al, 2007;Webster, 2011) and thus improve stimulus discrimination or detection of improbable stimuli (Benucci, Saleem & Carandini, 2013;Carandini & Heeger, 2012;Kohn, 2007;Solomon & Kohn, 2014;Wark, Lundstrom, & Fairhall, 2007).…”

“…Grotheer & Kovacs, 2015). On the other hand, MMN responses are increasingly considered as automatic bottom-up prediction error signals (Friston, 2005(Friston, , 2010Stefanics, Kimura, et al, 2011;Stefanics et al, 2014;Winkler, 2007), the neural correlates of updating of generative models of the environment by plastic changes in synaptic weights after the violation of the model's prediction by an unexpected event, i.e., a deviant stimulus. These generative models can be viewed as hierarchical representations of observed events of the environment, similar to predictive perceptual object representations suggested by Winkler and Czigler (2012).…”