Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (May 2019)

Single-Trial EEG-fMRI Reveals the Generation Process of the Mismatch Negativity

  • Qiang Li,
  • Guangyuan Liu,
  • Guangyuan Liu,
  • Guangjie Yuan,
  • Gaoyuan Wang,
  • Zonghui Wu,
  • Xingcong Zhao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00168
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13

Abstract

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Although research on the mismatch negativity (MMN) has been ongoing for 40 years, the generation process of the MMN remains largely unknown. In this study, we used a single-trial electro-encephalography (EEG)-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) coupling method which can analyze neural activity with both high temporal and high spatial resolution and thus assess the generation process of the MMN. We elicited the MMN with an auditory oddball paradigm while recording simultaneous EEG and fMRI. We divided the MMN into five equal-durational phases. Utilizing the single-trial variability of the MMN, we analyzed the neural generators of the five phases, thereby determining the spatiotemporal generation process of the MMN. We found two distinct bottom-up prediction error propagations: first from the auditory cortex to the motor areas and then from the auditory cortex to the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Our results support the regularity-violation hypothesis of MMN generation.

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