Location changes enhance hemispheric asymmetry of magnetic fields evoked by lateralized sounds in humans

Auditory mismatch negativity, the brain's change-detection response, has been shown to be more sensitive than other early auditory cortex responses to the hemispheric specialization of speech processing. The present study used magnetoencephalography to assess hemispheric differences in cortical evoked responses during auditory spatial processing. We compared N1m to lateralized vowels presented with equal probabilities with mismatch fields (MMNm) to rare lateralized noises interspersed in a sequence of frequent midline sounds. Both N1m and MMNm dipole amplitudes were higher in the hemisphere contralaterally to the side of sound lateralization, but this effect was about four times bigger in the mismatch paradigm. Moreover, only MMNm dipoles showed shorter latencies in the hemisphere contralaterally to stimulation. Apparently stimulus changes activate specialized auditory networks more strongly than non-deviant events.