Disrupting human auditory change detection: Chopin is superior to white noise

A deviant sound in a sequence of standard sounds elicits a neuromagnetic mismatch field (MMF) reflecting change detection based on the auditory sensory memory trace. To illuminate the nature of this trace, we investigated the effects of white noise and music maskers on the MMF. The stimuli were delivered to the participant's right ear, and the maskers were delivered to the same or contralateral ear. Only maskers containing transients (music) presented to either ear abolished the MMF. In parallel, the ability to discriminate the deviants decreased dramatically, probably because of integration of transient features of the music to the neural representations of standards and deviants. As a result, the similarity of these representations prevents change detection. White noise affected the MMF amplitude only when presented to the same ear to which the stimuli were presented. All maskers decreased the M100 but not the M50 amplitude, suggesting that the neural generators behind these responses are functionally separate.