Belief in biological origin of race (racial essentialism) increases sensitivities to cultural category changes measured by ERP mismatch negativity (MMN).

The dynamic multicultural view explains culture-specific effects on cognition that cultural knowledge is organized in multiple knowledge systems which are specific to each culture and differentially activated when exposed to related objects or scenes. This view predicts automatic categorizations of environmental information according to the culture-specific knowledge systems. This study investigated whether cultural information could be spontaneously categorized, and the modulation of this process by the belief in the biological origin of race (i.e., racial essentialism) with an event-related brain potential, the visual Mismatch Negativity (vMMN). Deviant pictures of Eastern (Western) culture were randomly presented in a stream of standard Western (Eastern) pictures while participants were playing a video game. Participants who endorse racial essentialism (high group) showed vMMNs to the deviants with high relevance to the Eastern or Western culture and the deviant with low Eastern relevance; while participants with low racial essentialism showed vMMN to the deviant with high Eastern relevance only. These results revealed spontaneous cultural categorization with vMMN and the top-down modulation of spontaneous categorization by personal belief. In addition, this is the first demonstration of MMNs to cultural deviance and the potentials in applying MMNs to study psychological essentialism and social categorization.

Frontotemporal network in automatic / pre-attentive detection of abstract change: An event-related optical signal (EROS) study.

The human brain constantly monitors the environment for unexpected changes. Under the prediction violation account, the Inferior Frontal Cortex (IFC) is involved in prediction-related processes for deviance detection processes in the Superior Temporal Cortex (STC). Consistent with this account, previous studies revealed an IFC-to-STC-followed-by-IFC mismatch response pattern to physical changes using event-related optical signals (EROS). However, detecting physical changes can be achieved by direct comparison of physical features between stimuli without making predictions, thus direct evidence supporting the prediction nature of the IFC-STC network in pre-attentive change detection was lacking. To address this issue, this study examined the EROS mismatch responses of the IFC-STC network when detecting the violation of an abstract rule. The rule "the higher the frequency of a tone, the stronger the intensity" established by standards was violated by deviants of 12 deviance levels. When deviants were preceded by a short train of standards, early IFC, STC, and late IFC EROS mismatch responses linearly increased with the deviance levels. When deviants were preceded by a longer train of standards, the STC but not the early or late IFC EROS mismatch responses were elicited by all the deviants without modulation by deviance levels. These results demonstrate a functional role of the IFC in the abstract change detection when insufficient rule-conforming information could be extracted from the preceding standards and are consistent with the predictive violation account of pre-attentive change detection.

Fronto-occipital mismatch responses in pre-attentive detection of visual changes: Implication on a generic brain network underlying Mismatch Negativity (MMN).

Current theories of pre-attentive change detection suggest a regularity or prediction violation mechanism involving a frontotemporal network. Modulations of the early inferior frontal cortex (IFC) mismatch response representing the effort in comparing a stimulus to the prediction, the superior temporal cortex (STC) response indicating deviance detection, and the late IFC response representing prediction model updating were consistently demonstrated in auditory change detection using event-related optical signal (EROS). If the prediction violation hypothesis is universal, a generic neural mechanism should be found in all sensory modalities. We postulated a generic fronto-sensory cortical network underlying the prediction violation mechanism: the IFC is responsible for non-modality-specific prediction processes while the sensory cortices are responsible for modality-specific error signal generation process. This study examined the involvement of the IFC-occipital cortex (OC) network in visual pre-attentive change detection. The EROS mismatch responses to deviant bar arrays violating a fixed orientation regularity (low in regularity abstractness) were compared to that of deviant violating a rotational orientation regularity (high in abstractness) while the information available for establishing the prediction model was manipulated by varying the number of standards preceding the deviants. Modulations of the IFCOC mismatch response patterns by abstractness and train length reflected the processing demands on the prediction processes and were similar to that of the IFC-STC network in auditory change detection. These findings demonstrated that the fronto-sensory cortical network is not unique to auditory pre-attentive change detection and provided supports for a universal neural mechanism across sensory modalities as suggested by the prediction violation hypothesis.

The critical role of the inferior frontal cortex in establishing a prediction model for generating subsequent mismatch negativity (MMN): A TMS-EEG study.

BACKGROUND: The prediction violation account of automatic or pre-attentive change detection assumed that the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) is involved in establishing a prediction model for detecting unexpected changes. Evidence supporting the IFC's contribution to prediction model is mainly based on the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) to deviants violating predictions that are established based on the frequently presented standard events. However, deviant detection involves processes, such as events comparison, other than prediction model establishment. OBJECTIVE: The current study investigated the critical role of the IFC in establishing a prediction model during standards processing for subsequent deviant detection. METHODS: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) was applied at the IFC to disrupt the processing of the initial 2 or 5 standards of a 3-, 6-, or 9-standard train, while the MMN responses to pitch deviant presented after the standard trains were recorded and compared. RESULTS: An abolishment of MMN was only observed when TMS was delivered to the IFC at the initial 2 standards of the 3-standard train, but not at the initial 5 standards, or when TMS at the vertex or TMS sound recording was applied. The MMNs were also preserved when IFC TMS, vertex TMS, or TMS sound recording was applied at the initial 2 or 5 standards of longer trains. CONCLUSION: The IFC plays a critical role in processing the initial standards of a short standard train for subsequent deviant detection. This result is consistent with the prediction violation account that the IFC is important for establishing the prediction model.

Functional connectivity of the frontotemporal network in preattentive detection of abstract changes: Perturbs and observes with transcranial magnetic stimulation and event-related optical signal.

Current theories of automatic or preattentive change detection suggest a regularity or prediction violation mechanism involving functional connectivity between the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) and the superior temporal cortex (STC). By disrupting the IFC function with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and recording the later STC mismatch response with event-related optical signal (EROS), previous study demonstrated a causal IFC-to-STC functional connection in detecting a pitch or physical change. However, physical change detection can be achieved by memory comparison of the physical features and may not necessarily involve regularity/rule extraction and prediction. The current study investigated the IFC-STC functional connectivity in detecting rule violation (i.e., an abstract change). Frequent standard tone pairs with a constant relative pitch difference, but varying pitches, were presented to establish a pitch interval rule. This abstract rule was violated by deviants with reduced relative pitch intervals. The EROS STC mismatch response to the deviants was abolished by the TMS applied at the IFC 80 ms after deviance onset, but preserved in the spatial (TMS on vertex), auditory (TMS sound), and temporal (200 ms after deviance onset) control conditions. These results demonstrate the IFC-STC connection in preattentive abstract change detection and support the regularity or prediction violation account.

Establishing the functional connectivity of the frontotemporal network in pre-attentive change detection with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and event-related optical signal.

Current theories of pre-attentive deviant detection postulate that before the Superior Temporal Cortex (STC) detects a change, the Inferior Frontal Cortex (IFC) engages in stimulus analysis, which is particularly critical for ambiguous deviations (e.g., deviant preceded by a short train of standards). These theories rest on the assumption that IFC and STC are functionally connected, which has only been supported by correlational brain imaging studies. We examined this functional connectivity assumption by applying Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to disrupt IFC function, while measuring the later STC mismatch response with the event-related optical signal (EROS). EROS can localize brain activity in both spatial and temporal dimensions via measurement of optical property changes associated with neuronal activity, and is inert to the electromagnetic interference produced by TMS. Specifically, the STC mismatch response at 120-180 ms elicited by a deviant preceded by a short standard train when IFC TMS was applied at 80 ms was compared with the STC mismatch responses in temporal control (TMS with 200 ms delay), spatial control (sham TMS at vertex), auditory control (TMS pulse noise only), and cognitive control (deviant preceded by a long standard train) conditions. The STC mismatch response to deviants preceded by the short train was abolished by TMS of the IFC at 80 ms, while the STC responses remained intact in all other control conditions. These results confirm the involvement of the IFC in the STC mismatch response and support a functional connection between IFC and STC.

Detecting violation in abstract pitch patterns with mismatch negativity.

The human brain automatically extracts regularities embedded in environmental auditory events. This study investigated the extraction of abstract patterns by measuring mismatch negativity (MMN). Participants watched a silent subtitled movie and ignored a sequence of auditory events comprising frequent standards and rare deviants presented in the background. Tone triplets with varying pitch (first-order property) served as the auditory events. The pitch intervals (interval 1 and interval 2) between the tones in a triplet and the ratio of interval 1 and 2 were considered second- and third-order properties, respectively. Both second- and third-order properties of the standards were kept constant in the mixed patterns block, while only the third-order property was kept constant in the ratio pattern block. Four sets of tone triplets violating the interval and ratio patterns with different deviance levels were presented as deviants in both blocks, and subtracted with physically identical stimuli in a control block to isolate the MMNs. Interval and ratio pattern deviants elicited MMNs in the mixed patterns block while only ratio pattern deviants elicited MMNs in the ratio pattern block. Larger MMNs were elicited by large deviants as compared to small deviants. These results suggest that the change detection system is sensitive to the violation of both second- and third-order abstract patterns. In addition to regularities in the abstract properties of auditory events, regularities in the relationships between abstract properties can also be extracted. This ability plays an important role in music and language perception.