Male AG. Orientation and contrast deviance examined: Contrast effects mimic deviant-related negativity yet neither produce the canonical neural correlate of prediction error.
PLoS One 2024;
19:e0299948. [PMID:
38489302 PMCID:
PMC10942059 DOI:
10.1371/journal.pone.0299948]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2023] [Accepted: 02/19/2024] [Indexed: 03/17/2024] Open
Abstract
The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is a negative-going event-related potential (ERP) component that is largest somewhere between 100 and 300 ms after the onset of an unpredictable visual event (i.e., a deviant) in an otherwise predictable sequence of visual events (i.e., standards). Many have argued that the vMMN allows us to monitor our ever-changing visual environment for deviants critical to our survival. Recently, however, it has become unclear whether unpredicted changes in low-level features of visual input, like orientation, can evoke the vMMN. I address this by testing isolated orientation changes, to confirm recent findings, and isolated contrast changes, to determine whether other low-level features of visual input do not evoke the vMMN in a traditional oddball paradigm. Eighteen participants saw sequences of rare, unanticipated, and different deviant stimuli, interspersed among frequent, anticipated, and identical standard stimuli. Stimuli were Gabor patches. Neither deviant produced a vMMN. Therefore, changes in low-level visual properties of well-controlled stimuli-a stimulus in which one property can be manipulated while all others remain unaffected-like Gabor patches do not yield a vMMN.
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