Brain reacts to occasional changes in duration of elements in a continuous sound

In order to study the event-related potential correlates of human ability to detect temporal changes within a continuous sound a sound consisting of two alternating pitches of the same constant duration, with infrequent shortenings of one of the tones, was presented to the subjects. The infrequent shortenings were found to elicit a negative component of the auditory event related potential, called the mismatch negativity (MMN). The experimental parameters were chosen to produce a MMN with a minimal contamination of N1, the main negative deflection of an evoked response with the same latency range as MMN and with a short experimental time. The duration of the whole experiment with three diff…

Mismatch negativity — Factors affecting its variation

Auditory event-related potentials (ERP) reflect temporal changes in speech stimuli

We studied the brain's reactions to deviations in the duration of a stop consonant using event-related potentials in an oddball paradigm. A naturally produced nonsense word was used as a frequent standard stimulus which differed from two infrequently presented deviant stimuli only by the duration of the silence period inside the stop, making the consonant sound longer. Evoked responses to the deviant stimuli showed sharply rising negativity after the unexpected prolongation of the silence and a later negativity, the duration of which was related to the timing of the beginning of the second part of the deviant sound. This later negativity is, at least partly, elicited by a mismatch process t…

Rapid serial naming: relations between different stimuli and neuropsychological factors.

We report two studies on rapid serial naming (RSN). Study 1 addressed the relations among RSN tasks comprising different stimuli. Separate components for RSN of alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric stimuli, as well as for tasks in which the stimuli alternated between categories were identified. In Study 2, phonological skills, processing speed, motor dexterity, and verbal fluency were found to explain RSN performance. The studies indicate: (1) that RSN tasks vary in their properties according to the stimuli used and according to the way the tasks are arranged, and (2) that RSN tasks are multi-componented.