title: The mismatch negativity: an index of cognitive decline in neuropsychiatric and neurological diseases and in ageing.
abstract: Cognitive impairment is a core element shared by a large number of different neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases. Irrespective of their different aetiologies and symptomatologies, most appear to converge at the functional deficiency of the auditory-frontal cortex network of auditory discrimination, which indexes cognitive impairment shared by these abnormalities. This auditory-frontal cortical deficiency, and hence cognitive decline, can now be objectively measured with the mismatch negativity and its magnetic equivalent. The auditory-frontal cortical network involved seems, therefore, to play a pivotal, unifying role in the different abnormalities. It is, however, more likely that the dysfunction that can be detected with the mismatch negativity and its magnetoencephalographic equivalent manifests a more widespread brain disorder, namely, a deficient N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor function, shared by these abnormalities and accounting for most of the cognitive decline.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. risto.naatanen@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: Risto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Näätänen
authors.forename: Teija
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kujala
authors.forename: Kairi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kreegipuu
authors.forename: Synnöve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.forename: Carles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Escera
authors.forename: Torsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Baldeweg
authors.forename: Curtis
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ponton
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D009422:Nervous System Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*