Do event-related potentials reveal the mechanism of the auditory sensory memory in the human brain?

Risto Näätänen; Petri Paavilainen; Kimmo Alho; Kalevi Reinikainen; Mikko Sams

doi:10.1016/0304-3940(89)90513-2

Do event-related potentials reveal the mechanism of the auditory sensory memory in the human brain?

Risto Näätänen^*, Petri Paavilainen, Kimmo Alho, Kalevi Reinikainen, Mikko Sams

^*Corresponding author for this work

Not published at Aalto University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

271 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Event-related brain potentials (ERP) to task-irrelevant tone pips presented at short intervals were recorded from the scalp of normal human subjects. Infrequent decrements in stimulus intensity elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN) which was larger in amplitude and shorter in latency the softer the deviant stimulus was. The results obtained imply memory representations which develop automatically and accurately represent the physical features of the repetitive stimulus. These memory traces appear to be those of the acoustic sensory memory, the 'echoic' memory. When an input does not match with such a trace the MMN is generated.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	217-221
Number of pages	5
Journal	Neuroscience Letters
Volume	98
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3940(89)90513-2
Publication status	Published - 27 Mar 1989
MoE publication type	A1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

Automatic processing
Event-related potential
Memory trace
Mismatch negativity
Neuronal representation
Sensory memory
Stimulus discrimination

Access to Document

10.1016/0304-3940(89)90513-2

Cite this

@article{d72c43340ed346929f1f971873779577,

title = "Do event-related potentials reveal the mechanism of the auditory sensory memory in the human brain?",

abstract = "Event-related brain potentials (ERP) to task-irrelevant tone pips presented at short intervals were recorded from the scalp of normal human subjects. Infrequent decrements in stimulus intensity elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN) which was larger in amplitude and shorter in latency the softer the deviant stimulus was. The results obtained imply memory representations which develop automatically and accurately represent the physical features of the repetitive stimulus. These memory traces appear to be those of the acoustic sensory memory, the 'echoic' memory. When an input does not match with such a trace the MMN is generated.",

keywords = "Automatic processing, Event-related potential, Memory trace, Mismatch negativity, Neuronal representation, Sensory memory, Stimulus discrimination",

author = "Risto N{\"a}{\"a}t{\"a}nen and Petri Paavilainen and Kimmo Alho and Kalevi Reinikainen and Mikko Sams",

year = "1989",

month = mar,

day = "27",

doi = "10.1016/0304-3940(89)90513-2",

language = "English",

volume = "98",

pages = "217--221",

journal = "Neuroscience Letters",

issn = "0304-3940",