Individual differences in mismatch negativity measures of involuntary attention shift

Differences in Pre-Attentive Processes of Sound Intensity Change Between High- and Low-Sensation Seekers

Abstract. High-sensation seekers are prone to search for changing stimuli. Pre-attentive processes reveal the earliest cortical change detection in response to external stimulus changes. This study recorded the mismatch negativity (MMN) to intensity increments and decrements in a repetitive tone in high- and low-sensation seekers. It was found that the MMN amplitude for intensity-decrement deviants was larger in high- than low-sensation seekers. However, with regard to deviant-increment stimulation, the difference between the two groups was not significant. Consequently, the sensitivity of high-sensitivity seekers to pre-attentively detect a decrease in sound intensity is higher than that of low-sensation seekers.

The mismatch negativity (MMN)--a unique window to disturbed central auditory processing in ageing and different clinical conditions

In this article, we review clinical research using the mismatch negativity (MMN), a change-detection response of the brain elicited even in the absence of attention or behavioural task. In these studies, the MMN was usually elicited by employing occasional frequency, duration or speech-sound changes in repetitive background stimulation while the patient was reading or watching videos. It was found that in a large number of different neuropsychiatric, neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as in normal ageing, the MMN amplitude was attenuated and peak latency prolonged. Besides indexing decreased discrimination accuracy, these effects may also reflect, depending on the specific stimulus paradigm used, decreased sensory-memory duration, abnormal perception or attention control or, most importantly, cognitive decline. In fact, MMN deficiency appears to index cognitive decline irrespective of the specific symptomatologies and aetiologies of the different disorders involved.

Do Personality Traits Modulate the Effect of Emotional Visual Stimuli on Auditory Information Processing?

Several lines of evidence attest robust relationships between personality dimensions and emotions, including cognitive aspect of emotion. More particularly, many studies reported strong relationships between extraversion, the behavioral activation system (BAS), and the cognitive processing of positive information, on the one hand, and between neuroticism, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), and the processing of negative information, on the other hand. Recently, DePascalis, Awari, Matteucci, and Mazzocco (2005 ) reported that personality traits modulated the effect of the emotional visual stimuli on the mismatch negativity (MMN). The aim of the present study was to replicate these data and extend them to other personality dimensions. Auditory MMN was recorded in normal subjects simultaneously to the presentation of emotional pictures selected as neutral, positive, or negative from the International Affective Picture System, and presented in randomized order. The results support the recent finding that personality (namely, BIS and harm avoidance) modulates the influence of emotional (negative) context on auditory information processing. The present findings suggest that the modulation by personality of change detection in the unattended environment as a function of context valence is limited to unpleasant context.

A comparison of the mismatch negativity and a differential waveform response

A mismatch negativity response (MMN) and a new differential waveform were derived in an effort to evaluate a neural refractory or recovery effect in adult listeners. The MMN was elicited using oddball test runs in which the standard and deviant stimuli differed in frequency To derive the differential waveform, the same standard and deviant stimuli were presented alone. MMN responses were obtained by subtracting the averaged responses to standards from the deviants. The differential waveforms were obtained by subtracting the averaged responses to standards presented alone from deviants presented alone. Scalp topography for the MMN and differential waveforms were similar. A significant (p <.05) positive and negative correlation was found between the earlier and later components of the bimodal MMN and the NI and P2 component of the differential waveform, respectively. Further, N1 and P2 of the differential waveform were significant (p <.05) predictor variables of early and late peak amplitudes of the MMN. These results suggest that refractory effects may overlay/modify the morphology of the MMN waveform.

Impulsivity affects mismatch negativity (MMN) measures of preattentive auditory processing

The current study addresses the relation between impulsive personality and mismatch negativity (MMN) as measure of auditory processing. In a sample of 33 normals, MMN was measured and related to self-reported measures of impulsive behavior. Participants were tested using a passive auditory oddball paradigm while EEG recordings were obtained. It was found that the negative MMN amplitude at the left lateral cluster was negatively correlated with self-reported impulsivity, with high impulsive individuals showing larger MMN amplitudes than low impulsive individuals. This indicates that impulsivity is related to preattentive auditory processing, a process that is not dependent on response execution. In addition to the well-known involvement of top-down control in impulsivity, these findings implicate that the cognitive bottom-up processing of incoming stimuli is associated with individual differences in impulsivity. Since the source of the MMN is thought to be located in the auditory cortex, this suggests involvement of "lower order" temporal lobe processes in impulsive behaviors.

Mismatch negativity in socially withdrawn children

BACKGROUND

Individual differences in auditory processing have been associated with social withdrawal, introversion, and other forms of dysfunction in social engagement. The goal of this study was to investigate the characteristics of an electrophysiologic response that is seen to index early cortical auditory processing (mismatch negativity, MMN) among socially withdrawn and more sociable control children.

METHODS

Auditory event-related potentials to standard and deviant tone stimuli were computed for 23 socially withdrawn children and 22 control subjects. We calculated MMN difference waveforms for frontal, central, and parietal electrode sites.

RESULTS

Socially withdrawn children had smaller MMN amplitude and longer MMN latencies compared with more sociable control children.

CONCLUSION

The findings point to the involvement of individual differences in early cortical auditory processing in childhood social withdrawal. Reduced MMN amplitude and delayed latency may index a component of social withdrawal seen in socially withdrawn children and in depressed and schizophrenic patients. The existence of a secondary MMN generator in the frontal cortex may provide a link between the hypothesized frontal lobe involvement in childhood social withdrawal, schizophrenia, and depression and the MMN reductions seen in these conditions.

Electrophysiological evidence of abnormal activation of the cerebral network of involuntary attention in alcoholism

OBJECTIVE

Increased distractibility is a common impairment in alcoholism, but objective evidence has remained elusive. Here, a task designed to investigate with event-related brain potentials (ERPs) the neural mechanism underlying distraction was used to show abnormal involuntary orienting of attention in chronic alcoholism.

METHODS

Fifteen alcoholics and 17 matched healthy controls were instructed to ignore auditory stimuli while concentrating in the discrimination of immediately following visual stimuli. The auditory sequences contained repetitive standard tones occasionally replaced by deviant tones of slightly higher frequency, or by complex novel sounds.

RESULTS

Deviant tones and novel sounds distracted visual performance, i.e. increased reaction time to visual stimuli, similarly in patients and controls. Compared to controls, however, alcoholics showed ERP abnormalities, i.e. enhanced P3a amplitudes over the left frontal region, and a positive posterior deflection instead of the frontally distributed reorienting negativity (RON).

CONCLUSIONS

The enhanced P3a to novelty and subsequent positive wave instead of RON in alcoholics suggests encoding into working memory of task-irrelevant auditory events and provides neurophysiological markers of impaired involuntary attention mechanisms in chronic alcoholism.