Hippocampal evoked potentials to pitch deviances in an auditory oddball situation in the rabbit: no human mismatch-like dependence on standard stimuli.
Hippocampal auditory evoked potentials (AEP) were recorded in 10 rabbits when pitch deviant tones occurred in a series of standard tones (oddball situation). In control recordings, deviant tones were presented without intervening standard tones (deviant-alone situation). All AEP deflections observed in the oddball situation were found also in the deviant-alone situation. Thus, it appeared that none of the AEP deflections to deviant tones in the oddball situation was specific to a memory trace of preceding standard tones. This observation was in contradiction to such a specificity of the mismatch negativity (MMN) found in humans. Instead, a connection to a neuronal orienting reaction interpretation was shown to be apparent. A need for additional control procedures revealing a contribution of neural orienting responses in animal MMN experiments is discussed.
Ruusuvirta
T
T
Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Korhonen
T
T
Penttonen
M
M
Arikoski
J
J
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D011817:Rabbits; D013997:Time Factors