Negative brain potentials reflect the subjective distance between standard and deviant tones

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of occasionally presented deviants in a sequence of tones. The sequence consisted of a series of frequent standard C5 tones from the diatonic musical scale, in which three deviants (F #5, C6, and F #6) and a target (C4) were occasionally embedded. Twenty subjects were asked to detect the target. The deviants elicited frontal N2. The amplitude of the N2 was smaller for C6 than for the other two deviants, whereas peak latencies increased as a function of the frequency distance between the deviant and the standard. The smaller N2 to C6 than that to the other deviants was considered to reflect closer subjective distance due to the octave relationship between C6 and the standard C5.