Mismatch negativity

The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a change-related brain response described in the field of cognitive neuroscience. It is an auditory event-related potential (ERP) component, which is elicited task-independently by an infrequent change in a repetitive sound sequence. The MMN is elicited in response to violations of simple rules governing the properties of auditory information and is considered to reflect the automatic formation of a short-term neural model of the physical or abstract regularities in the auditory environment. The MMN is a fronto-central negative potential with sources in the primary and non-primary auditory cortex and a latency of 150-250 ms post-stimulus.

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The mismatch negativity was first discovered and described by Risto Näätänen and colleagues.

References

Näätänen, R., Winkler, I., 1999. The concept of auditory stimulus representation in cognitive neuroscience. Psychological Bulletin 125, 826-859.

Picton, T.W., Alain, C., Otten, L., Ritter, W., Achim, A., 2000. Mismatch negativity: Different water in the same river. Audiology and Neuro-otology 5, 111-139.

Sabri, M., De Lugt, D.R., Campbell, K., 2000. The mismatch negativity to frequency deviants during the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology 54, 230-240.

Winkler, I., Karmos, G., Näätänen, R., 1996. Adaptive modeling of the unattended acoustic environment reflected in the mismatch negativity event-related potential. Brain Research 742, 239-252.

Links

• Cognitive Brain Research Unit at the University of Helsinki