We make predictions about eye of origin of visual input: Visual mismatch negativity from binocular rivalry

The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is a negative component of event-related potentials (ERPs). It occurs when an infrequent visual stimulus, a deviant, is randomly and unpredictably presented in a sequence of frequent visual stimuli, the standards, and is thought to reflect prediction and prediction error of visual input. We investigated the sensitivity of vMMN to eye of origin (utrocular) information as well as to orientation information. We presented 80% of binocular rivalry standards (one grating to one eye and an identical, orthogonally oriented grating to the other eye), and 20% of deviants, either by swapping the gratings between the eyes to change the eye of origin of the gratings (an eye-swap deviant) or by rotating the gratings by 45° to change the orientation of the gratings (an orientation deviant). We found an orientation vMMN that was maximal at about 250 ms and an eye-swap vMMN that was maximal at about 380 ms. We also found deviance-related activity to both sorts of stimuli earlier than is traditionally defined as a vMMN. We used standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) to localize each vMMN component and found similar sources for both vMMNs in occipital and frontal areas of the brain but differences in parietal and temporal areas. We conclude that eye of origin information can be used to elicit vMMN, that eye-swap vMMN is different to orientation vMMN, and that vMMN can be generated from information of which observers are unaware.