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Updated: Aug 15, 2026

Mapping Cortical Dynamics Using Simultaneous MEG/EEG and Anatomically-constrained Minimum-norm Estimates: an Auditory Attention Example
Published on: October 24, 2012
Mismatch response of the human brain to changes in sound location
1Institute of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany.
Abstract:
WE investigated whether the enhanced negativity of the human event-related brain potential elicited by changes in auditory lateralization is due to a higher-order change-detection process or whether it can be explained exclusively in terms of selective sensory adaptation. Infrequent changes in lateralization of a repetitive standard tone, generated by changes in interaural time differences, elicited a frontocentrally distributed negative brain wave in the 100-250 ms range relative to stimulus onset. This brain wave was also elicited when possible sensory adaptation was prevented by controlling for the state of refractoriness of location-specific neurones. The results demonstrate that changes in lateralization elicit a genuine mismatch negativity (MMN), indicating the activity of an automatic higher-order change-detection process.
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