Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 19, 2026
Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness
Published on: August 1, 2017
MMN and P300 are both modulated by the featured/featureless nature of deviant stimuli
A Calcus1, P Deltenre2, I Hoonhorst3
1Unité de Recherches en Neurosciences Cognitives, Centre for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.), Brussels, Belgium; Laboratoire de Neurophysiologie Sensorielle et Cognitive, Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B., CHU Brugmann), Brussels, Belgium; FNRS, Brussels, Belgium.
Objective:
This study was designed to test the effect of the featured/featureless nature of deviant stimuli on mismatch negativity (MMN), P300 (P3a and P3b) and on behavioral discrimination performances.
Methods:
Ten healthy adults were submitted to stimuli contrasted by the presence or absence of a frequency sweep. Discrimination performances were collected during the neurophysiological sessions.
Results:
MMN, P3a and P3b were much larger for featured deviants than for featureless ones. Behavioral data (d', at ceiling level, and reaction times) were not affected by the featured/featureless nature of the deviant stimulus.
Conclusion:
Behavioral results and MMN amplitudes are in accordance with our previous study, using the same design albeit in an ignore condition and with collection of the behavioral data deferred until after the neurophysiological sessions. The present study strengthens previous evidence suggesting that two mechanisms contribute to the MMN evoked by featured deviants: the memory comparison process and the adaptation/fresh-afferent phenomenons.
Significance:
We here demonstrate that the neurophysiological processes underlying P300 generation are also impacted by the featured/featureless nature of the deviant stimulus and that the dissociation from behavioral data, which are not impacted, is also observed when both types of data are recorded simultaneously.
