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This study adopts a cross-linguistic perspective and investigates how musical expertise affects the perception of duration and pitch in language. Native speakers of Chinese (N = 44) and Estonian (N = 46), each group subdivided into musicians and non-musicians, participated in a mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment where they passively listened to both Chinese and Estonian stimuli, followed by a behavioral experiment where they attentively discriminated the stimuli in the non-native language (i.e., Chinese to Estonian participants and Estonian to Chinese participants). In both experiments, stimuli of duration change, pitch change, and duration plus pitch change were discriminated. We found higher behavioral sensitivity among Chinese musicians than non-musicians in perceiving the duration change in Estonian and higher behavioral sensitivity among Estonian musicians than non-musicians in perceiving all types of changes in Chinese, but no corresponding effect was found in the MMN results, which suggests a more salient effect of musical expertise on foreign language processing when attention is required. Secondly, Chinese musicians did not outperform non-musicians in attentively discriminating the pitch-related stimuli in Estonian, suggesting that musical expertise can be overridden by tonal language experience when perceiving foreign linguistic pitch, especially when an attentive discrimination task is administered. Thirdly, we found larger MMN among Chinese and Estonian musicians than their non-musician counterparts in perceiving the largest deviant (i.e., duration plus pitch) in their native language. Taken together, our results demonstrate a positive effect of musical expertise on language processing.

An early component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP), the mismatch negativity (MMN), has been shown to be sensitive to native phonemic sound contrasts. The potential changes to this neural sensitivity from foreign language learning have only been marginally studied. The existing research seems to suggest that the neural sensitivity as indexed by the MMN can adapt to foreign language sound contrasts with very target-specific training, but whether the effects are long-lasting or generalize to proper foreign language learning is yet to be investigated in a viable longitudinal study design. We therefore recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from two groups of language officer cadets (learning either Arabic (n = 8) or Dari (n = 12)) while they listened to speech sound contrasts from both languages. We recorded their EEG four times over the course of 19 months of intensive foreign language training (immediately before they started, after three weeks, after six months, and after 19 months).We did not find any language-specific effects of learning on the cadets’ MMNs to the speech sound contrasts. We did, however, elicit statistically reliable MMNs to both sound contrasts for both groups at most of the four times of measurement. Furthermore, we found that the Arabic learners’ MMNs to the Arabic stimuli diminished over time, and that the Dari learners’ P3a responses to the Arabic stimuli diminished over time. Correlating the participants’ MMNs with their behavioral responses to the language stimuli did not reveal any strong links between behavior and neurophysiology. However, those Dari learners whose MMNs to the Dari stimuli increased the most within the first three weeks, also received the highest grades on a listening task after 17 weeks.

Estonian is a quantity language with both a primary duration cue and a secondary pitch cue, whereas Chinese is a tonal language with a dominant pitch use. Using a mismatch negativity experiment and a behavioral discrimination experiment, we investigated how native language background affects the perception of duration only, pitch only, and duration plus pitch information. Chinese participants perceived duration in Estonian as meaningless acoustic information due to a lack of phonological use of duration in their native language; however, they demonstrated a better pitch discrimination ability than Estonian participants. On the other hand, Estonian participants outperformed Chinese participants in perceiving the non-speech pure tones that resembled the Estonian quantity (i.e., containing both duration and pitch information). Our results indicate that native language background affects the perception of duration and pitch and that such an effect is not specific to processing speech sounds., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Predicting events in the ever-changing environment is a fundamental survival function intrinsic to the physiology of sensory systems, whose efficiency varies among the population. Even though it is established that a major source of such variations is genetic heritage, there are no studies tracking down auditory predicting processes to genetic mutations. Thus, we examined the neurophysiological responses to deviant stimuli recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 108 healthy participants carrying different variants of Val158Met single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) within the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, responsible for the majority of catecholamines degradation in the prefrontal cortex. Our results showed significant amplitude enhancement of prediction error responses originating from the inferior frontal gyrus, superior and middle temporal cortices in heterozygous genotype carriers (Val/Met) vs homozygous (Val/Val and Met/Met) carriers. Integrating neurophysiology and genetics, this study shows how the neural mechanisms underlying optimal deviant detection vary according to the gene-determined cathecolamine levels in the brain.

We here turn the general and theoretical question of the complementarity of EEG and MEG for source reconstruction, into a practical empirical one. Precisely, we address the challenge of evaluating multimodal data fusion on real data. For this purpose, we build on the flexibility of Parametric Empirical Bayes, namely for EEG-MEG data fusion, group level inference and formal hypothesis testing.The proposed approach follows a two-step procedure by first using unimodal or multimodal inference to derive a cortical solution at the group level; and second by using this solution as a prior model for single subject level inference based on either unimodal or multimodal data. Interestingly, for inference based on the same data (EEG, MEG or both), one can then formally compare, as alternative hypotheses, the relative plausibility of the two unimodal and the multimodal group priors. Using auditory data, we show that this approach enables to draw important conclusions, namely on (i) the superiority of multimodal inference, (ii) the greater spatial sensitivity of MEG compared to EEG, (iii) the ability of EEG data alone to source reconstruct temporal lobe activity, (iv) the usefulness of EEG to improve MEG based source reconstruction.Importantly, we largely reproduce those findings over two different experimental conditions. We here focused on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses for which generators have been extensively investigated with little homogeneity in the reported results. Our multimodal inference at the group level revealed spatio-temporal activity within the supratemporal plane with a precision which, to our knowledge, has never been achieved before with non-invasive recordings.

Objective: We investigated how infant mismatch responses (MMRs), which have the potential for providing information on auditory discrimination abilities, could predict subsequent development of pre-reading skills and the risk for familial dyslexia., Methods: We recorded MMRs to vowel, duration, and frequency deviants in pseudo-words at birth and 28 months in a sample over-represented by infants with dyslexia risk. We examined MMRs' associations with pre-reading skills at 28 months and 4-5 years and compared the results in subgroups with vs. without dyslexia risk., Results: Larger positive MMR (P-MMR) at birth was found to be associated with better serial naming. In addition, increased mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN), and decreased P-MMR at 28 months overall, were shown to be related to better pre-reading skills. The associations were influenced by dyslexia risk, which was also linked to poor pre-reading skills., Conclusions: Infant MMRs, providing information about the maturity of the auditory system, are associated with the development of pre-reading skills. Speech-processing deficits may contribute to deficits in language acquisition observed in dyslexia., Significance: Infant MMRs could work as predictive markers of atypical linguistic development during early childhood. Results may help in planning preventive and rehabilitation interventions in children at risk of learning impairments., (Copyright © 2024 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a neurophysiological measure of auditory novelty detection that could serve as a translational biomarker of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. However, the replicability of its magnetoencephalographic (MEG) counterpart (MMNm) has been insufficiently addressed. In the current study, test–retest reliability of the MMNm response to both duration and omission deviants was evaluated over two MEG sessions in 16 healthy adults. MMNm amplitudes and latencies were obtained at both sensor- and source-level using a cortically-constrained minimum-norm approach. Intraclass correlations (ICC) were derived to assess stability of MEG responses over time. In addition, signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and within-subject statistics were obtained in order to determine MMNm detectability in individual participants. ICC revealed robust values at both sensor- and source-level for both duration and omission MMNm amplitudes (ICC = 0.81–0.90), in particular in the right hemisphere, while moderate to strong values were obtained for duration MMNm and omission MMNm peak latencies (ICC = 0.74–0.88). Duration MMNm was robustly identified in individual participants with high SNR, whereas omission MMNm responses were only observed in half of the participants. Our data indicate that MMNm to unexpected duration changes and omitted sounds are highly reproducible, providing support for the use of MEG-parameters in basic and clinical research.

Intact phonological processing is crucial for successful literacy acquisition. While individuals with difficulties in reading and spelling (i.e., developmental dyslexia) are known to experience deficient phoneme discrimination (i.e., segmental phonology), findings concerning their prosodic processing (i.e., suprasegmental phonology) are controversial. Because there are no behavior-independent studies on the underlying neural correlates of prosodic processing in dyslexia, these controversial findings might be explained by different task demands. To provide an objective behavior-independent picture of segmental and suprasegmental phonological processing in impaired literacy acquisition, we investigated event-related brain potentials during passive listening in typically and poor-spelling German school children. For segmental phonology, we analyzed the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) during vowel length discrimination, capturing automatic auditory deviancy detection in repetitive contexts. For suprasegmental phonology, we analyzed the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) that automatically occurs in response to prosodic boundaries. Our results revealed spelling group differences for the MMN, but not for the CPS, indicating deficient segmental, but intact suprasegmental phonological processing in poor spellers. The present findings point towards a differential role of segmental and suprasegmental phonology in literacy disorders and call for interventions that invigorate impaired literacy by utilizing intact prosody in addition to training deficient phonemic awareness.

Objective: The aim of the study was to conduct multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) implementations and identify via a test-retest study the reliability of MMN responses obtained through a 5-stimulus version of the MMN paradigm. It was also aimed to identify a reliable MMN recording number by comparing the MMN responses obtained under conditions of ten and four recordings conditions while making the recording time shorter., Methods: Twenty-one healthy volunteers, aged between 18 and 36 years, were included in the study. A 5-stimulus version of the multi-feature MMN paradigm was presented to participants. Ten recordings were obtained for each participant under both test and retest conditions. The MATLAB program was utilized in the evaluation of MMN amplitude and latency. The Fz was chosen for the statistical analysis. Four of the ten recordings were chosen at random, and statistical analyses were performed again for those four recordings., Results: There was no statistically significant difference in amplitudes obtained from test and retest conditions with ten recordings. With four recordings, for frequency, intensity, duration, and gap deviants, there were no statistically significant differences between amplitudes obtained under test and retest conditions. However, there was a statistically significant difference between amplitudes of the location deviant. No statistically significant difference was observed among latencies under test-retest conditions with both ten and four recordings., Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that MMN amplitudes could be used reliably as short-time evaluations with four recordings, but more recordings are required for MMN latencies. In terms of practicality, four recordings are more advantageous and comfortable for both clinicians and patients in MMN practice., Significance: When behavioral tests are required, MMN is regarded as an objective test that can be used reliably for adults, children, and infants who cannot be evaluated using behavioral methods. It is concluded that conditions with four recordings aremore advantageous and comfortable for both clinicians and patients in MMN practice., (Copyright © 2022 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: We investigated early maturation of the infant mismatch response MMR, including mismatch negativity (MMN), positive MMR (P-MMR), and late discriminative negativity (LDN), indexing auditory discrimination abilities, and the influence of familial developmental dyslexia risk., Methods: We recorded MMRs to vowel, duration, and frequency deviants in pseudo-words at 0, 6, and 28 months and compared MMRs in subgroups with vs. without dyslexia risk, in a sample over-represented by risk infants., Results: Neonatal MMN to the duration deviant became larger and earlier by 28 months; MMN was elicited by more deviants only at 28 months. The P-MMR was predominant in infancy; its amplitude increased by 6 and decreased by 28 months; latency decreased with increasing age. An LDN emerged by 6 months and became larger and later by 28 months. Dyslexia risk affected MMRs and their maturation., Conclusions: MMRs demonstrate an expected maturational pattern with 2-3 peaks by 28 months. The effects of dyslexia risk are prominent but not always as expected., Significance: This large-scale longitudinal study shows MMR maturation with three age groups and three deviants. Results illuminate MMR's relation to the adult responses, and hence their cognitive underpinnings, and help in identifying typical/atypical auditory development in early childhood., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objectives: -Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been demonstrated as a potential biomarker for pre-attentive processing and prognosis in patients with psychosis. However, previous studies mainly evaluated the reliability of MMN across only two repeated sessions, which is inadequate to draw a convincing conclusion. The current study aimed to assess multi-session test-retest reliability in duration-related MMN (dMMN) and frequency-related MMN (fMMN)., Methods: -We recorded four repeated sessions of electroencephalography (EEG) from 16 healthy participants in an oddball task. MMNs were extracted and their reliability was evaluated by intra-class coefficient (ICC). We also analyzed the correlation between fMMN and dMMN., Results: -Both dMMN and fMMN amplitudes exhibited good test-retest reliability, and fMMN had better reliability (average ICC = 0.7279) than dMMN (average ICC = 0.6974). Moreover, dMMN and fMMN showed more than moderate linear correlation in amplitudes (r = 0.598, CI: [0.100, 0.857])., Conclusion: -Both the duration- and frequency-related MMN amplitudes were highly reliable across four-session experiments. These results provide further evidence for the potential utility of MMNs as biomarkers in research into brain function, and prognosis in psychotic illness., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest Statement The authors declare that they have no competing interest., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Linguistic and vocal information are thought to be differentially processed since the early stages of speech perception, but it remains unclear if this differentiation also concerns automatic processes of memory retrieval. The aim of this ERP study was to compare the automatic retrieval processes for newly learned voices vs phonemes. In a longitudinal experiment, two groups of participants were trained in learning either a new phoneme or a new voice. The MMN elicited by the presentation of the two was measured before and after the training. An enhanced MMN was elicited by the presentation of the learned phoneme, reflecting the activation of an automatic memory retrieval process. Instead, a reduced MMN was elicited by the learned voice, indicating that the voice was perceived as a typical member of the learned voice identity. This suggests that the automatic processes that retrieve linguistic and vocal information are differently affected by experience., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Long-term outcomes of early implanted, young adult cochlear implant (CI) users remain variable. We measured auditory discrimination by means of event-related potentials in this population to examine whether variability at the level of cortical auditory processing helps to explain speech abilities., Methods: Using an auditory oddball paradigm, the P300 and Mismatch Negativity (MMN) were measured in 8 young adult CI users and 14 normal-hearing peers. We related P300 amplitude and latency to clinical speech perception scores in quiet and to duration of deafness., Results: All individuals showed P300 responses. The MMN response was less robust in both groups. There was no evidence for differences in P300 responses between CI users and controls. P300 amplitude was associated with speech perception scores (r = 0.70, p = .05) and duration of deafness (r = -0.83, p = .009)., Conclusions: Early CI implantation yields good auditory processing outcomes at young adult age and, in contrast to MMN, the P300 provides a robust measure for auditory processing on an individual level., Significance: At the cortical level, early implanted, long-term CI users have good auditory discrimination, leaving variability in implantation outcomes unexplained. This group provides unique insight into the long-term neurophysiological underpinnings of early implantation., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None of the authors have potential conflicts of interest to be disclosed. All funding resources supporting this study are acknowledged. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationship that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2020 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To determine the optimal methods for measuring mismatch negativity (MMN), an auditory event-related potential (ERP), and quantify sources of MMN variance in a multisite setting., Methods: Reliability of frequency, duration, and double (frequency + duration) MMN was determined from eight traveling subjects, tested on two occasions at eight laboratory sites. Deviant-specific variance components were estimated for MMN peak amplitude and latency measures using different ERP processing methods. Generalizability (G) coefficients were calculated using two-facet (site and occasion), fully-crossed models and single-facet (occasion) models within each laboratory to assess MMN reliability., Results: G-coefficients calculated from two-facet models indicated fair (0.4 < G<=0.6) duration MMN reliability at electrode Fz, but poor (G < 0.4) double and frequency MMN reliability. Single-facet G-coefficients averaged across laboratory resulted in improved reliability (G > 0.5). MMN amplitude reliability was greater than latency reliability, and reliability with mastoid referencing significantly outperformed nose-referencing., Conclusions: EEG preprocessing methods have an impact on the reliability of MMN amplitude. Within site MMN reliability can be excellent, consistent with prior single site studies., Significance: With standardized data collection and ERP processing, MMN can be reliably obtained in multisite studies, providing larger samples sizeswithin rare patient groups., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2020 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Auditory change-detection responses provide information on sound discrimination and memory skills in infants. We examined both the automatic change-detection process and the processing of emotional information content in speech in preterm infants in comparison to full-term infants at term age., Methods: Preterm (n = 21) and full-term infants' (n = 20) event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded at term age. A challenging multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm with phonetic deviants and rare emotional speech sounds (happy, sad, angry), and a simple one-deviant oddball paradigm with pure tones were used., Results: Positive mismatch responses (MMR) were found to the emotional sounds and some of the phonetic deviants in preterm and full-term infants in the multi-feature MMN paradigm. Additionally, late positive MMRs to the phonetic deviants were elicited in the preterm group. However, no group differences to speech-sound changes were discovered. In the oddball paradigm, preterm infants had positive MMRs to the deviant change in all latency windows. Responses to non-speech sounds were larger in preterm infants in the second latency window, as well as in the first latency window at the left hemisphere electrodes (F3, C3)., Conclusions: No significant group-level differences were discovered in the neural processing of speech sounds between preterm and full-term infants at term age. Change-detection of non-speech sounds, however, may be enhanced in preterm infants at term age., Significance: Auditory processing of speech sounds in healthy preterm infants showed similarities to full-term infants at term age. Large individual variations within the groups may reflect some underlying differences that call for further studies., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest None of the authors have potential conflicts of interest to be disclosed., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Cognitive deficits and abnormal event-related brain potentials (ERP) have been proposed as risk markers for the development of schizophrenia. Evidence is inconclusive whether these markers indicate a risk for the development of psychosis or illness progression., Methods: The present study aimed at further clarification by comparing symptom expression (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, BRPS), the ERP Mismatch Negativity (MMN), and neuropsychological performance on the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery between healthy controls (HC, n = 38) and individuals at different stages of illness: individuals at risk for psychosis (ARP, n = 33), patients at first admission, thus, early stage (ES, n = 35), chronic schizophrenia patients (CS, n = 25). Moreover, symptom expression was reassessed for ARP and ES at a 6 months follow-up., Results: MMN was smaller in individuals with manifest psychosis (ES, CS) than in HC, but did not differ between ARP and HC. In contrast, ARP showed similar cognitive deficits as ES and CS, all three groups differing from HC. Lower cognitive performance predicted higher symptom severity at index assessments and 6 months follow-up in ARP and ES, while MMN did not explain additional variance., Conclusion: MMN seems to mark manifest psychosis, independent of early or chronic stage, while cognitive deficits mark early present psychopathology in individuals at risk for and with diagnosed psychosis rather than illness progression., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Previous electrophysiological and psychophysical tests have suggested that somatosensory integration is abnormal in dystonia. Here, we hypothesised that this abnormality could relate to a more general deficit in pre-attentive error/deviant detection in patients with dystonia. We therefore tested patients with dystonia and healthy subjects using a mismatch negativity paradigm (MMN), where evoked potentials generated in response to a standard repeated stimulus are subtracted from the responses to a rare "odd ball" stimulus., Methods: We assessed MMN for somatosensory and auditory stimuli in patients with cervical dystonia and healthy age matched controls., Results: We found a significant group ∗ oddball type interaction effect (F (1, 34) = 4.5, p = 0.04, ρ I  = 0.63). A follow up independent t-test for sMMN data, showed a smaller sMMN amplitude in dystonic patients compared to controls (mean difference control-dystonia: -1.0 µV ± 0.3, p < 0.00, t = -3.1). However the amplitude of aMMN did not differ between groups (mean difference control-dystonia: -0.2 µV ± 0.2, p = 0.24, t = -1.2). We found a positive correlation between somatosensory MMN and somatosensory temporal discrimination threshold., Conclusion: These results suggest that pre-attentive error/deviant detection, specifically in the somatosensory domain, is abnormal in dystonia. This could underlie some previously reported electrophysiological and psychophysical abnormalities of somatosensory integration in dystonia., Significance: One could hypothesize a deficit in pre-conscious orientation towards potentially salient signals might lead to a more conservative threshold for decision-making in dystonia., (Copyright © 2018 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Uncovering molecular bases for auditory language processing in the human brain is a fundamental scientific challenge. The power and latency of the magnetic mismatch field (MMF) elicited by phoneme change, which are magnetoencephalographic indices of language function in its early stage of information processing, are theoretically thought to be modulated by N-methyl-d-aspartate-type glutamate receptor (NMDAR) function, but no study has yet assessed this possibility. We have thus sought to demonstrate an association between phonetic MMF power/latency and levels of plasma d-serine, an intrinsic co-agonist of glycine binding sites on NMDAR, in adults., Methods: The MMF response to phoneme changes was recorded using 204-channel magnetoencephalography in 61 healthy, right-handed, Japanese adults. Plasma levels of d- and l-serine were measured for each participant., Results: We did not find a significant correlation between MMF power/latency and plasma serine levels., Conclusions: Despite a sufficient sample size, we failed to find an association between the physiological markers of the early stage of information processing of language in the auditory cortex and biomarkers indexing glutamatergic function., Significance: Our study did not indicate that a molecular index of glutamatergic function could be a surrogate marker for the early stage of information processing of language in humans., (Copyright © 2018 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In specific language impairment (SLI), there is a delay in the child's oral language skills when compared with nonverbal cognitive abilities. The problems typically relate to phonological and morphological processing and word learning. This article reviews studies which have used mismatch negativity (MMN) in investigating low-level neural auditory dysfunctions in this disorder. With MMN, it is possible to tap the accuracy of neural sound discrimination and sensory memory functions. These studies have found smaller response amplitudes and longer latencies for speech and non-speech sound changes in children with SLI than in typically developing children, suggesting impaired and slow auditory discrimination in SLI. Furthermore, they suggest shortened sensory memory duration and vulnerability of the sensory memory to masking effects. Importantly, some studies reported associations between MMN parameters and language test measures. In addition, it was found that language intervention can influence the abnormal MMN in children with SLI, enhancing its amplitude. These results suggest that the MMN can shed light on the neural basis of various auditory and memory impairments in SLI, which are likely to influence speech perception., (Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Intact phonological processing is crucial for successful literacy acquisition. While individuals with difficulties in reading and spelling (i.e., developmental dyslexia) are known to experience deficient phoneme discrimination (i.e., segmental phonology), findings concerning their prosodic processing (i.e., suprasegmental phonology) are controversial. Because there are no behavior-independent studies on the underlying neural correlates of prosodic processing in dyslexia, these controversial findings might be explained by different task demands. To provide an objective behavior-independent picture of segmental and suprasegmental phonological processing in impaired literacy acquisition, we investigated event-related brain potentials during passive listening in typically and poor-spelling German school children. For segmental phonology, we analyzed the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) during vowel length discrimination, capturing automatic auditory deviancy detection in repetitive contexts. For suprasegmental phonology, we analyzed the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) that automatically occurs in response to prosodic boundaries. Our results revealed spelling group differences for the MMN, but not for the CPS, indicating deficient segmental, but intact suprasegmental phonological processing in poor spellers. The present findings point towards a differential role of segmental and suprasegmental phonology in literacy disorders and call for interventions that invigorate impaired literacy by utilizing intact prosody in addition to training deficient phonemic awareness., (Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The brain is constantly generating predictions of future sensory input to enable efficient adaptation. In the auditory domain, this applies also to the processing of speech. Here we aimed to determine whether the brain predicts the following segments of speech input on the basis of language-specific phonological rules that concern non-adjacent phonemes. Auditory event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded in a mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, where the Finnish vowel harmony, determined by the first syllables of pseudowords, either constrained or did not constrain the phonological composition of pseudoword endings. The phonological rule of vowel harmony was expected to create predictions about phonologically legal pseudoword endings. Results showed that MMN responses were larger for phonologically illegal than legal pseudowords, and P3a was elicited only for illegal pseudowords. This supports the hypothesis that speech input is evaluated against context-dependent phonological predictions that facilitate speech processing., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To investigate the contribution of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to attentive and pre-attentive stimulus discrimination via transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)., Methods: Novelty- and target-P3 as indexes of attentive stimulus discrimination and the mismatch negativities (MMNs) for duration, intensity, and frequency deviants as indexes of pre-attentive stimulus discrimination were recorded before and after delivering anodal and cathodal tDCS to the left DLPFC., Results: MMN amplitudes for all kinds of deviants decreased from pre- to post-tDCS measurement. For duration and intensity deviants, this pre-post reduction was stronger after anodal tDCS, as compared to the decrease after sham stimulation. No such modulation was found for the MMN to frequency deviants. Neither the novelty-P3 nor the target-P3 was modulated by tDCS., Conclusion: The selective MMN decrease after anodal (excitatory) stimulation of the left DLPFC suggests that this region either inhibits the processing of specific auditory changes or modulates the habituation of the MMN to certain kinds of deviances., Significance: Our finding that left frontal anodal tDCS reduces the MMN to duration and intensity deviants further highlights the contribution of frontal brain regions to MMN generation and extends previous reports of reduced MMNs to frequency deviants after right frontal anodal tDCS., (Copyright © 2016 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: The mismatch negativity (MMN) is an electrophysiological index of early auditory attention and has repeatedly been suggested to be associated with cognitive functioning. Despite the frequently reported finding of reduced MMN amplitude in schizophrenia, up to now, studies assessing the impact of perceptual discrimination training aiming to improve MMN measures in schizophrenia patients are scarce., Method: In the present study, the effect of auditory training (AUD, n=14) on the MMN was compared to that of visual-spatial training (VIS, n=14) and a treatment-as-usual (TAU, n=14) condition in schizophrenia patients. Training consisted of ten 50-min sessions over two weeks. Assessments took place before and after training and at a two-month follow-up. They comprised clinical measures and MMN recordings to frequency and duration deviant stimuli., Results: There was a significant main effect for type of stimulus deviance with a more negative MMN to frequency than duration deviants. In contrast to our hypotheses, we did not find training specific effects on MMN amplitude or latency., Conclusion: The visual, as well as the auditory training program failed to result in treatment related MMN changes in schizophrenia patients when compared to treatment-as-usual as a control condition. In contrast to reports in healthy subjects, the induction of training related MMN changes in schizophrenia patients may constitute a specific challenge and require more extensive training protocols., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We examined cross-language differences in neural encoding and tracking of intensity and pitch cues signaling English stress patterns. Auditory mismatch negativities (MMNs) were recorded in English and Mandarin listeners in response to contrastive English pseudowords whose primary stress occurred either on the first or second syllable (i.e., "nocTICity" vs. "NOCticity"). The contrastive syllable stress elicited two consecutive MMNs in both language groups, but English speakers demonstrated larger responses to stress patterns than Mandarin speakers. Correlations between the amplitude of ERPs and continuous changes in the running intensity and pitch of speech assessed how well each language group's brain activity tracked these salient acoustic features of lexical stress. We found that English speakers' neural responses tracked intensity changes in speech more closely than Mandarin speakers (higher brain-acoustic correlation). Findings demonstrate more robust and precise processing of English stress (intensity) patterns in early auditory cortical responses of native relative to nonnative speakers., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP) in response to auditory-expectancy violation, is sensitive to central auditory processing deficits associated with several clinical conditions and to auditory skills deriving from musical expertise. This sensitivity is more evident for stimuli integrated in complex sound contexts. This study tested whether increasing magnitudes of deviation (levels) entail increasing MMN amplitude (or decreasing latency), aiming to create a balanced version of the musical multi-feature paradigm towards measurement of extensive auditory discrimination profiles in auditory expertise or deficits., Methods: Using electroencephalography, we measured MMNs in healthy young adults to six types of sound feature change (pitch, timbre, location, intensity, slide and rhythm) at three different magnitudes of deviation, embedded in a music-sounding context. We also behaviourally assessed the individual musical aptitude using the Musical Ear Test (MET)., Results: 16 of 18 sound feature changes elicited significant MMNs. For pitch, intensity, location, and slide, the MMN amplitude increased with increasing magnitude of feature change. We observed a ceiling effect for rhythm, and a floor effect for timbre. The slide MMN amplitude correlated positively with MET melody score and negatively with MET rhythm score., Conclusions: This novel paradigm provides an extensive, objective measure of auditory discrimination profile for different sound features embedded in a complex sound context., Significance: The paradigm can be adopted to study the neurophysiology of individuals with music processing difficulties or with special musical skills, and may be a useful tool for investigating development, plasticity, and deficits of auditory processing., (Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To investigate whether effects of the glutamatergic N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine on the mismatch negativity (MMN) vary between duration and frequency deviants, as suggested by clinical studies on schizophrenia patients., Methods: Our meta-analysis included previous studies that used ketamine in order to induce psychotic experiences in healthy participants and that recorded the MMN either by electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography., Results: The analysis revealed systematic MMN amplitude decreases and, with a lower effect size, latency increases after ketamine administration. However, the observed amplitude and latency effects did not vary between duration and frequency deviants., Conclusion: Across studies, there is no evidence that ketamine effects on the MMN are larger for duration than frequency deviants., Significance: Our findings tentatively suggest that, in addition to an NMDA receptor hypofunction, other factors might contribute to the sometimes observed pattern of impaired MMN responses to duration deviants, but unimpaired MMN responses to frequency deviants in schizophrenia., (Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: This study aimed to test single and double deviance-related modulations of the middle latency response (MLR) and the applicability of the optimum-2 multi-feature paradigm., Methods: The MLR and the MMN to frequency, intensity and double-feature deviants of an optimum-2 multi-feature paradigm and the MMN to double-feature deviants of an oddball paradigm were recorded in young adults., Results: Double deviants elicited significant enhancements of the Nb and Pb MLR waves compared with the waves elicited by standard stimuli. These enhancements equalled approximately the sum of the numerical amplitude differences elicited by the single deviants. In contrast, the MMN to double deviants did not show such additivity. MMNs elicited by double deviants of the multi-feature and the oddball paradigm showed no significant difference in amplitude or latency., Conclusions: The optimum-2 multi-feature paradigm is suitable for recording double deviance-related modulations of the MLR. Interspersed intensity and frequency deviants in the standard trace of the optimum-2 condition multi-feature paradigm did not weaken the double MMN., Significance: The optimum-2 multi-feature paradigm could be especially beneficial for clinical studies on early deviance-related modulations in the MLR, due to its optimized utilization of the recording time., (Copyright © 2015 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The brain's ability to recognize different acoustic cues (e.g., frequency changes in rapid temporal succession) is important for speech perception and thus for successful language development. Here we report on distinct event-related potentials (ERPs) in 5-6-year-old children recorded in a passive oddball paradigm to repeated tone pair stimuli with a frequency change in the second tone in the pair, replicating earlier findings. An occasional insertion of a third tone within the tone pair generated a more merged pattern, which has not been reported previously in 5-6-year-old children. Both types of deviations elicited pre-attentive discriminative mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN) responses. Temporal principal component analysis (tPCA) showed a similar topographical pattern with fronto-central negativity for MMN and LDN. We also found a previously unreported discriminative response complex (P340-N440) at the temporal electrode sites at about 140 ms and 240 ms after the frequency deviance, which we suggest reflects a discriminative processing of frequency change. The P340 response was positive with a clear radial distribution preceding the fronto-central frequency MMN by about 30 ms. The results indicate that 5-6-year-old children can detect frequency change and the occasional insertion of an additional tone in sound pairs as reflected by MMN and LDN, even with quite short within-stimulus intervals (150 ms and 50 ms). Furthermore, MMN for these changes is preceded by another response to deviancy, temporal P340, which seems to reflect a parallel but earlier discriminatory process., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This study tested effects of task requirements and knowledge on auditory distraction effects. This was done by comparing the response to a pitch change (an irrelevant, distracting tone feature) that occurred predictably in a tone sequence (every 5th tone) under different task conditions. The same regular sound sequence was presented with task conditions varying in what information the participant was given about the predictability of the pitch change, and when this information was relevant for the task to be performed. In all conditions, participants performed a tone duration judgment task. Behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures were obtained to measure distraction effects and deviance detection. Predictable deviants produced behavioral distraction effects in all conditions. However, the P3a amplitude evoked by the predictable pitch change was largest when participants were uninformed about the regular structure of the sound sequence, showing an effect of knowledge on involuntary orienting of attention. In contrast, the mismatch negativity (MMN) component was only modulated when the regularity was relevant for the task and not by stimulus predictability itself. P3a and behavioral indices of distraction were not fully concordant. Overall, our results show differential effects of knowledge and predictability on auditory distraction effects indexed by neurophysiological (P3a) and behavioral measures., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

With age the ability to understand speech in multitalker environments usually deteriorates. The central auditory system has to perceptually segregate and group the acoustic input into sequences of distinct auditory objects. The present study used electrophysiological measures to study effects of age on auditory stream segregation in a multitalker scenario. Younger and older adults were presented with streams of short speech stimuli. When a single target stream was presented, the occurrence of a rare (deviant) syllable among a frequent (standard) syllable elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological correlate of automatic deviance detection. The presence of a second, concurrent stream consisting of the deviant syllable of the target stream reduced the MMN amplitude, especially when located nearby the target stream. The decrease in MMN amplitude indicates that the rare syllable of the target stream was less perceived as deviant, suggesting reduced stream segregation with decreasing stream distance. Moreover, the presence of a concurrent stream increased the MMN peak latency of the older group but not that of the younger group. The results provide neurophysiological evidence for the effects of concurrent speech on auditory processing in older adults, suggesting that older adults need more time for stream segregation in the presence of concurrent speech., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Consecutive sound events are often to some degree predictive of each other. Here we investigated the brain's capacity to detect contingencies between consecutive sounds by means of electroencephalography (EEG) during passive listening. Contingencies were embedded either within tonal or verbal stimuli. Contingency extraction was measured indirectly via the elicitation of the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the event-related potential (ERP) by contingency violations. MMN results indicate that structurally identical forms of predictability can be extracted from both tonal and verbal stimuli. We also found similar generators to underlie the processing of contingency violations across stimulus types, as well as similar performance in an active-listening follow-up test. However, the process of passive contingency extraction was considerably slower (twice as many rule exemplars were needed) for verbal than for tonal stimuli These results suggest caution in transferring findings on complex predictive regularity processing obtained with tonal stimuli directly to the speech domain., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Fibromyalgia (FM) patients often show deficits in cognitive functions such as attention and working memory. We assumed that pre-attentive information processing, a crucial element in human perception and cognition, would be altered in FM patients. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine whether FM patients exhibit alterations in pre-attentive processing as assessed by auditory mismatch negativity (MMN)., Methods: Auditory evoked magnetic fields were recorded in FM patients (n=18) and healthy control subjects (n=21) during a duration-deviant auditory oddball paradigm. The magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) was obtained by subtracting responses to standard tones from responses to deviant tones. Pressure pain thresholds over the thenar and trapezius muscles were determined using an algometer., Results: MMNm peak amplitudes in right hemispheres were attenuated, and the directional asymmetry coefficient of the MMNm amplitude was lower in FM patients, indicating a more leftward asymmetry than in healthy control subjects. Smaller right MMNm amplitude was associated with lower pressure pain thresholds of thenar muscles in FM patients., Conclusions: Our results suggested that pre-attentive processing of auditory information is impaired in FM patients., Significance: This study provided neurophysiological evidence of impaired pre-attentive sensory change detection in FM., (Copyright © 2014 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Language-specific, automatically responding memory traces form the basis for speech sound perception and new neural representations can also evolve for non-native speech categories. The aim of this study was to find out how a three-day phonetic listen-and-repeat training affects speech perception, and whether it generates new memory traces. We used behavioural identification, goodness rating, discrimination, and reaction time tasks together with mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response registrations to determine the training effects on native Finnish speakers. We trained the subjects the voicing contrast in fricative sounds. Fricatives are not differentiated by voicing in Finnish, i.e., voiced fricatives do not belong to the Finnish phonological system. Therefore, they are extremely hard for Finns to learn. However, only after three days of training, the native Finnish subjects had learned to perceive the distinction. The results show striking changes in the MMN response; it was significantly larger on the second day after two training sessions. Also, the majority of the behavioural indicators showed improvement during training. Identification altered after four sessions of training and discrimination and reaction times improved throughout training. These results suggest remarkable language-learning effects both at the perceptual and pre-attentive neural level as a result of brief listen-and-repeat training in adult participants., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Prediction and prevention of psychosis have become major research topics. Clinical approaches warrant objective biological parameters to enhance validity in prediction of psychosis onset. In this regard, event-related potentials (ERPs) have been identified as promising tools for improving psychosis prediction., Methods: Herein, the focus is on sensory gating, mismatch negativity (MMN) and P300, thereby discussing which parameters allow for a timely and valid detection of future converters to psychosis. In a first step, we systematically reviewed the studies that resulted from a search of the MEDLINE database. In a second step, we performed a meta-analysis of those investigations reporting transitions that statistically compared ERPs in converting versus nonconverting subjects., Results: Sensory gating, MMN, and P300 have been demonstrated to be impaired in subjects clinically at risk of developing a psychotic disorder. In the meta-analysis, duration MMN achieved the highest effect size measures., Conclusions: In summary, MMN studies have produced the most convincing results until now, including independent replication of the predictive validity. However, a synopsis of the literature revealed a relative paucity of ERP studies addressing the psychosis risk state. Considering the high clinical relevance of valid psychosis prediction, future research should question for the most informative paradigms and should allow for meta-analytic evaluation with regard to specificity and sensitivity of the most appropriate parameters., (Copyright © 2015 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We examined a consistent deficit observed in bilinguals: poorer speech-in-noise (SIN) comprehension for their nonnative language. We recorded neuroelectric mismatch potentials in mono- and bi-lingual listeners in response to contrastive speech sounds in noise. Behaviorally, late bilinguals required ∼10dB more favorable signal-to-noise ratios to match monolinguals' SIN abilities. Source analysis of cortical activity demonstrated monotonic increase in response latency with noise in superior temporal gyrus (STG) for both groups, suggesting parallel degradation of speech representations in auditory cortex. Contrastively, we found differential speech encoding between groups within inferior frontal gyrus (IFG)-adjacent to Broca's area-where noise delays observed in nonnative listeners were offset in monolinguals. Notably, brain-behavior correspondences double dissociated between language groups: STG activation predicted bilinguals' SIN, whereas IFG activation predicted monolinguals' performance. We infer higher-order brain areas act compensatorily to enhance impoverished sensory representations but only when degraded speech recruits linguistic brain mechanisms downstream from initial auditory-sensory inputs., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Visual search and oddball paradigms were combined to investigate memory for to-be-ignored color changes in a group of 12 healthy participants. The onset of unexpected color change of an irrelevant stimulus evoked two reliable ERP effects: a component of the event-related potential (ERP), similar to the visual mismatch negativity response (vMMN), with a latency of 120-160 ms and a posterior distribution over the left hemisphere and Late Fronto-Central Negativity (LFCN) with a latency of 320-400 ms, apparent at fronto-central electrodes and some posterior sites. Color change of that irrelevant stimulus also slowed identification of a visual target, indicating distraction. The amplitude of this color-change vMMN, but not LFCN, indexed this distraction effect. That is, electrophysiological and behavioral measures were correlated. The interval between visual scenes approximated 1s (611-1629 ms), indicating that the brain's sensory memory for the color of the preceding visual scenes must persist for at least 600 ms. Therefore, in the case of the neural code for color, durable memory representations are formed in an obligatory manner., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Currently, the mismatch negativity (MMN) deficit is one of the most robust and replicable findings in schizophrenia, reflecting cognitive and functional decline, psychosocial and socio-occupational impairment, and executive dysfunction in these patients. An important break-through has very recently taken place here in the prediction of conversion to psychosis when the MMN in particular to change in tone duration was recorded in clinically at risk-mental state (ARMS) individuals. Attenuations in the MMN in these patients may be very useful in helping clinicians determine who are most likely to develop a psychotic disorder, as we will review in the present article., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Natural sound environments are dynamic, with overlapping acoustic input originating from simultaneously active sources. A key function of the auditory system is to integrate sensory inputs that belong together and segregate those that come from different sources. We hypothesized that this skill is impaired in individuals with phonological processing difficulties. There is considerable disagreement about whether phonological impairments observed in children with developmental language disorders can be attributed to specific linguistic deficits or to more general acoustic processing deficits. However, most tests of general auditory abilities have been conducted with a single set of sounds. We assessed the ability of school-aged children (7-15 years) to parse complex auditory non-speech input, and determined whether the presence of phonological processing impairments was associated with stream perception performance. A key finding was that children with language impairments did not show the same developmental trajectory for stream perception as typically developing children. In addition, children with language impairments required larger frequency separations between sounds to hear distinct streams compared to age-matched peers. Furthermore, phonological processing ability was a significant predictor of stream perception measures, but only in the older age groups. No such association was found in the youngest children. These results indicate that children with language impairments have difficulty parsing speech streams, or identifying individual sound events when there are competing sound sources. We conclude that language group differences may in part reflect fundamental maturational disparities in the analysis of complex auditory scenes., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Job burnout is a significant cause of work absenteeism. Evidence from behavioral studies and patient reports suggests that job burnout is associated with impairments of attention and decreased working capacity, and it has overlapping elements with depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances. Here, we examined the electrophysiological correlates of automatic sound change detection and involuntary attention allocation in job burnout using scalp recordings of event-related potentials (ERP). Volunteers with job burnout symptoms but without severe depression and anxiety disorders and their non-burnout controls were presented with natural speech sound stimuli (standard and nine deviants), as well as three rarely occurring speech sounds with strong emotional prosody. All stimuli elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) responses that were comparable in both groups. The groups differed with respect to the P3a, an ERP component reflecting involuntary shift of attention: job burnout group showed a shorter P3a latency in response to the emotionally negative stimulus, and a longer latency in response to the positive stimulus. Results indicate that in job burnout, automatic speech sound discrimination is intact, but there is an attention capture tendency that is faster for negative, and slower to positive information compared to that of controls., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We compared processing of speech and non-speech by means of the mismatch negativity (MMN). For this purpose, the MMN elicited by vowels was compared to those elicited by two non-speech stimulus types: spectrally rotated vowels, having the same stimulus complexity as the speech stimuli, and sounds based on the bands of formants of the vowels, representing non-speech stimuli of lower complexity as compared to the other stimulus types. This design allows controlling for effects of stimulus complexity when comparing neural correlates of processing speech to non-speech. Deviants within a modified multi-feature design differed either in duration or spectral property. Moreover, the difficulty to discriminate between the standard and the two deviants was controlled for each stimulus type by means of an additional active discrimination task. Vowels elicited a larger MMN compared to both non-speech stimulus types, supporting the concept of language-specific phoneme representations and the role of the participants' prior experience., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To evaluate the influence of frontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on auditory mismatch negativity (MMN)., Methods: MMN is an event related potential calculated by subtracting the amplitude of the evoked potentials in response to a "standard" stimulus from the evoked potentials produced by a rare "oddball" stimulus. Here we assessed the influence of anodal tDCS, cathodal tDCS or sham stimulation delivered over the right inferior frontal cortex on MMN in response to duration and frequency auditory deviants in 10 healthy subjects., Results: MMN to frequency deviants was significantly reduced after anodal tDCS compared with sham or cathodal stimulation which did not change MMN to frequency deviants. Neither anodal nor cathodal tDCS had any effect on MMN to duration deviants., Conclusions: Non-invasive brain stimulation with tDCS can influence MMN. The differing networks known to be activated by duration and frequency deviants could account for the differential effect of tDCS on duration and frequency MMN., Significance: Non-invasive brain stimulation could be a useful method to manipulate MMN for experimental purposes., (Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To assess auditory event-related potentials at preschool age in children born very preterm (VP, 27.4 ± 1.9 gestational weeks, n=70) with a high risk of cognitive dysfunction., Methods: We used an oddball paradigm consisting of a standard tone randomly replaced by one of three infrequent deviants (differing in frequency, sound direction or duration)., Results: The P1 and N2 latencies were inversely correlated to age (50-63 months) both in VP (r=-0.451, p<0.001, and r=-0.305, p=0.01, respectively) and term born controls (TC; n=15). VP children had smaller P1 than near-term (n=12) or TC (1.70 ± 0.17 μV vs 2.68 ± 0.41 and 2.92 ± 0.43, respectively; p<0.05). Mismatch negativity response did not differ between groups., Conclusions: Our data suggest a fast maturation of P1 and N2 responses with fast decrease in P1 and N2 latencies around the age of 5 years. Mismatch negativity response does not seem to be a robust measure for defining abnormalities in VP children., Significance: In ERP studies in preschool children, even small, non-significant group differences in age at recording should be corrected for. Very preterm born children at preschool age have aERP patterns as earlier described in full-term born children with cognitive deficits., (Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Prior research suggests that event-related potentials (ERP) obtained during active and passive auditory paradigms, which have demonstrated abnormal neurocognitive function in schizophrenia, may provide helpful tools in predicting transition to psychosis. In addition to ERP measures, reduced modulations of EEG alpha, reflecting top-down control required to inhibit irrelevant information, have revealed attentional deficits in schizophrenia and its prodromal stage. Employing a three-stimulus novelty oddball task, nose-referenced 48-channel ERPs were recorded from 22 clinical high-risk (CHR) patients and 20 healthy controls detecting target tones (12% probability, 500Hz; button press) among nontargets (76%, 350Hz) and novel sounds (12%). After current source density (CSD) transformation of EEG epochs (-200 to 1000ms), event-related spectral perturbations were obtained for each site up to 30Hz and 800ms after stimulus onset, and simplified by unrestricted time-frequency (TF) principal components analysis (PCA). Alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD) as measured by TF factor 610-9 (spectral peak latency at 610ms and 9Hz; 31.9% variance) was prominent over right posterior regions for targets, and markedly reduced in CHR patients compared to controls, particularly in three patients who later developed psychosis. In contrast, low-frequency event-related synchronization (ERS) distinctly linked to novels (260-1; 16.0%; mid-frontal) and N1 sink across conditions (130-1; 3.4%; centro-temporoparietal) did not differ between groups. Analogous time-domain CSD-ERP measures (temporal PCA), consisting of N1 sink, novelty mismatch negativity (MMN), novelty vertex source, novelty P3, P3b, and frontal response negativity, were robust and closely comparable between groups. Novelty MMN at FCz was, however, absent in the three converters. In agreement with prior findings, alpha ERD and MMN may hold particular promise for predicting transition to psychosis among CHR patients., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Acoustic violations in temporal regularity have been traditionally indexed by mismatch negativity (MMN). However, recent studies have demonstrated that humans can detect auditory changes in physical sound features, such as frequency, location and intensity, in the first 50 ms after sound onset. Our aim was to examine if temporal regularity violations could be detected in the middle latency range., Methods: We used an oddball paradigm with 290 ms as standard stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and 200 ms as deviant SOA. We also employed a control paradigm that comprised of seven SOAs including 200 and 290 ms, in order to control for differences due to refractoriness., Results: In the middle latency range, temporal regularity violations led to enhanced Pa and Nb responses, which behaved differently to the corresponding SOAs in the control condition. In the long latency range, temporal regularity violations led to similar behaviours in both oddball and control paradigms., Conclusions: These findings suggest that with a fast presentation rate, human brains are capable to detect temporal regularity violations in the middle latency range., Significance: Together with previous studies that found early change detection responses, the current study emphasises that the human brain can encode simple regularity violation as early as approximately 50 ms post-stimulus onset., (Copyright © 2013 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a promising window on how the functional integrity of auditory sensory memory and change discrimination is modulated by age and relevant clinical conditions. However, the effects of aging on MMN have remained somewhat elusive, particularly at short interstimulus intervals (ISIs). We performed a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed MMN studies that had targeted both young and elderly adults to estimate the mean effect size. Nine studies, consisting of 29 individual investigations, were included and the final total study population consisted of 182 young and 165 elderly subjects. The effects of different deviant types and duration of ISIs on the effect size were assessed. The overall mean effect size was 0.63 (95% CI at 0.43-0.82). The effect sizes for long ISI (>2s, effect size 0.68, 95% CI at 0.31-1.06) and short ISI (<2s, effect size 0.61, 95% CI at 0.39-0.84) were both considered moderate. A further analysis showed a prominent aging-related decrease in MMN responses to duration and frequency changes at short ISIs. It was also interesting to note that the effect size was about 25% larger for duration deviant condition compared to the frequency deviant condition. In conclusion, a reduced MMN response to duration and frequency deviants is a robust feature among the aged adults, which suggests that there has been a decline in the functional integrity of central auditory processing in this population., (© 2013.)

A Mismatch Negativity (MMN) study was performed to investigate whether pre-attentive vowel perception is influenced by phonological status. We compared the MMN response to the acoustic distinction between the allophonic variation [ε-e] and phonemic contrast [e-i] present in a Southern-Italian variety (Tricase dialect). Clear MMNs were elicited for both the phonemic and allophonic conditions. Interestingly, a shorter latency was observed for the phonemic pair, but no significant amplitude difference was observed between the two conditions. Together, these results suggest that for isolated vowels, the phonological status of a vowel category is reflected in the latency of the MMN peak. The earlier latency of the phonemic condition argues for an easier parsing and encoding of phonemic contrasts in memory representations. Thus, neural computations mapping auditory inputs into higher perceptual representations seem 'sensitive' to the contrastive/non-contrastive status of the sounds as determined by the listeners' knowledge of the own phonological system., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)