Can the Mismatch Negativity Really Be Elicited by Abstract Linguistic Contrasts?

ABSTRACT: The mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential component that reflects pre-attentive change detection in the brain. As an electrophysiological index of processing that responds to differences in incoming consecutive stimuli, the MMN can be elicited through, for example, the presentation of two different categories of sounds in an oddball paradigm where sounds from the "standard" category occur frequently and sounds from the "deviant" category occur rarely. The specificity of what can elicit the MMN is yet to be fully defined. Here we test whether the MMN can be generated by an abstract linguistic contrast with no reliable acoustic cue. Previous studies have shown that the way in which an acoustic cue is used to elicit MMN is influenced by linguistic knowledge, but have not sho

SUBMITTER: Politzer-Ahles S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11410353 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature