A modified oddball paradigm “cross-modal delayed response” and the research on mismatch negativity

A modified oddball paradigm was developed to facilitate the focus of attention and to minimize target effects on deviant-related components of auditory and visual event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited with long interstimulus intervals. Subjects were required to focus on either the visual or auditory stimulus in each stimulus block. Deviant-related components were obtained by subtracting ERPs of the standard stimulus from that of the deviant stimulus for each modality with each stimulus condition. Results showed that auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) and a visual early deviant related negativity (DRN1) were elicited both when stimuli were attended and unattended. In contrast, N2b and P3 were produced only under the attended condition. In comparison of attended MMN and unattended MMN at three time windows (100-150 ms, 150-200 ms, and 200-250 ms) of MMN zone, different scalp distributions were shown, depending on the time windows. This result suggests that the attended auditory MMN is a mixed wave, consisting of genuine MMN, N2b, and possible P165. The effect of attention on MMN may stem from the contamination of these overlapping components. With the present paradigm, at least three sensory memory traces have to be maintained simultaneously in multiple sensory modalities to support automatic processing.