Neural mechanisms of ERP change: combining insights from electrophysiology and mathematical modeling

Using a standardized database of EEG data, recorded during the habituation and oddball paradigms, changes in the auditory event-related potential (ERP) are demonstrated on the time scale of seconds and minutes. Based on previous research and a mathematical model of neural activity, neural mechanisms that could account for these changes are proposed. When the stimulus tones are not relevant to a task, N100 magnitude decreases substantially for the first repetition of a stimulus pattern and increases in response to a variant tone. It is argued these short-term changes are consistent with the hypothesis that there is a refractory period in the neural elements underlying the ERP. In the oddball paradigm, when the stimulus tones are task-relevant, the magnitudes of both N100 and P200 for backgrounds decrease over the entire six-minute recording session. It is argued that these changes are mediated by a decreasing arousal level, and consistent with this, a subject's electrodermal activity (EDA) is shown to reduce over the recording session. By fitting ERPs generated by a biophysical model of neural activity, it is shown that the changes in the background ERPs over the recording session can be reproduced by changing the strength of connections between populations of cortical neurons. For ERPs elicited by infrequent stimuli, there is no corresponding trend in the magnitudes of N100 or P300 components. The effects of stimuli serial order on ERPs are also assessed, showing that the N100 for background ERPs and the N100 and P300 for target ERPs increases as the probability, and expectancy, of receiving a task relevant stimulus increases. Cortical neuromodulation by acetylcholine (ACh) is proposed as a candidate mechanism to mediate the ERP changes associated with attention and arousal.