title: Violations of newly-learned predictions elicit two distinct P3 components.
abstract: Sensitivity to the environment's sequential regularities makes it possible to predict upcoming sensory events. To investigate the mechanisms that monitor such predictions, we recorded scalp EEG as subjects learned to reproduce sequences of motions. Each sequence was seen and reproduced four successive times, with occasional deviant directions of motion inserted into otherwise-familiar and predictable sequences. To dissociate the neural activity associated with encoding new items from that associated with detecting sequence deviants, we measured ERPs to new, familiar, and deviant sequence items. Both new and deviant sequence items evoked enhanced P3 responses, with the ERP to deviant items encompassing both P300-like and Novelty P3-like subcomponents with distinct timing and topographies. These results confirm that the neural response to deviant items differs from that to new items, and that unpredicted events in newly-learned sequences are identified by processes similar to those monitoring stable sequential regularities.
authors: Department of Psychology, Brandeis University Waltham, MA, USA ; Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Boston University Boston, MA, USA.
authors: Abigail
authors: A
authors: Noyce
authors: Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University Waltham, MA, USA.
authors: Robert
authors: R
authors: Sekuler
keywords: EEG; P3; expectation; sequence learning; working memory