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Magnetoencephalographic recordings demonstrate attentional modulation of mismatch-related neural activity in human auditory cortex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 1998

MARTY G. WOLDORFF ,
STEVEN A. HILLYARD ,
CHRIS C. GALLEN ,
SCOTT R. HAMPSON  and
FLOYD E. BLOOM
MARTY G. WOLDORFF
Affiliation:
Research Imaging Center and Department of Radiology, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, USA
STEVEN A. HILLYARD
Affiliation:
Department of Neurosciences, 0608, University of California–San Diego, La Jolla, USA
CHRIS C. GALLEN
Affiliation:
Department of Neuropharmacology, Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, USA
SCOTT R. HAMPSON
Affiliation:
Department of Neuropharmacology, Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, USA
FLOYD E. BLOOM
Affiliation:
Department of Neuropharmacology, Research Institute of Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, USA
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Abstract

It is widely agreed that the negative brain potential elicited at 150–200 ms by a deviant, less intense sound in a repetitive series can be modulated by attention. To investigate whether this modulation represents a genuine attention effect on the mismatch negativity (MMN) arising from auditory cortex or attention-related activity from another brain region, we recorded both the MMN and the mismatch magnetic field (MMF) elicited by such deviants in a dichotic listening task. Deviant tones in the attended ear elicited a sizable MMF that was well modeled as a dipolar source in auditory cortex. Both the MMN and MMF to unattended-ear deviants were highly attenuated. These findings support the view that the MMN/MMF elicited in auditory cortex by intensity deviants, and thus the underlying feature-analysis and mismatch-detection processes, are not strongly automatic but rather can be gated or suppressed if attention is strongly focused elsewhere.

Keywords

MEGMMNMMFERPMismatch negativityAttention
Type
Research Article
Information
Psychophysiology , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , May 1998 , pp. 283 - 292
Copyright
© 1998 Society for Psychophysiological Research

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