Visual mismatch negativity: pre-attentive, pre-conscious or non-conscious?
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1
Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
Deviant visual features, deviant conjunctions of features, deviant objects, and violation of temporal regulations elicit distinct event-related brain activity, the visual mismatch negativity (and/or the change positivity; vMMN, CP). Such components may emerge even if the participants are unaware of the deviant stimulation. Concerning the functional significance of the processes underlying the deviance-related activity, there are at least three possibilities. (1) As a “mechanistic” consequence of the neural hardware activity, vMMN and the related ERP components have no function in perceptual (or in other cognitive) processes. However, our recent data shows that task-related activity has specific influence on the vMMN. Changes of irrelevant stimulus features unrelated to the discrimination requirements of an ongoing task elicit larger vMMN than deviants in a stimulus dimension similar to the relevant one. (2) Registration of rare, unexpected, incongruent stimulation is a prerequisite of further stimulus processing, e.g., change-detection may be followed by the orienting reaction (attentive processing). This mismatch-related activity would be considered as pre-attentive. However, in the visual modality there are no data showing corresponding sequence of events. (3) Veridical perception of visual objects (constancies) requires continuous registration of the structure of the whole visual scene. Such registration requires a set of complex computations. Storage of the results of the computations may increase the efficiency of perceptual processes. VMMN (and related ERP components) may be considered as a correlate of updating the content of the respective storage system. There is no need for the conscious recall of the content of this memory system. In case of supporting evidences for (3), the processes underlying vMMN (and related components), are “non-conscious”, instead of being “pre-conscious”. Accordingly, and as our data show, attentive detection of the changing stimulation requires brain activity qualitatively different from those indicated by the vMMN.
Conference:
MMN 09
Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Symposium 6: Attention and consciousness
Citation:
Czigler
I and
Pató
L
(2009). Visual mismatch negativity: pre-attentive, pre-conscious or non-conscious?.
Conference Abstract:
MMN 09
Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.088
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Received:
25 Mar 2009;
Published Online:
25 Mar 2009.
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Correspondence:
István Czigler, Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, czigler.istvan@ttk.mta.hu