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Session: Neurophysiology & Sleep
Session starts: Thursday 26 January, 10:30
Presentation starts: 10:45
Room: Room 530

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Annika de Goede (Centre for Human Drug Research)
Femke de Graaf (Centre for Human Drug Research)
Robert Doll (Centre for Human Drug Research)

Abstract:
The oddball paradigm is a classical neuropsychological test to evoke event related potentials. The auditory passive task studies mismatch negativity (MMN) without requiring attention of participants. MMN is thought to reflect an automatic process that detects a difference between an incoming stimulus and the sensory memory trace of preceding stimuli. Traditionally, one specific deviant tone is presented between standard tones with a low probability. Nowadays, variations are described using multiple types of deviant tones. This study aims to 1) compare the traditional one-deviant and three-deviant (Optimal-3) paradigms, and 2) determine the repeatability and effect of deviant type of the Optimal-3 paradigm. Ten healthy participants performed the traditional (once) and Optimal-3 oddball (four times) paradigm. During the traditional task, 600 standard and 150 deviant tones were presented that differed only in frequency. The Optimal-3 task consisted of standard tones (540x) alternated with deviants that differed in either frequency, intensity, or duration (180x per type). MMN amplitude and latency were determined from the difference waveform (interval 100-250 ms post-stimulus) at electrode Cz and analysed using linear mixed models. Compared to the traditional oddball paradigm, the Optimal-3 frequency deviant showed a significantly larger MMN amplitude (p<.01) and shorter latency (p<.001). For the Optimal-3 paradigm, significant differences between deviant types were detected. MMN amplitude was larger for the duration compared to the frequency (p<.01) and intensity (p<.01) deviants, while no significant difference was found between the frequency and intensity deviants. Furthermore, MMN latency was longer for the intensity compared to the frequency (p<.001) and duration (p<.001) deviants, and for the frequency compared to the duration deviant (p<.01). Repeatability of MMN amplitude was good (ICC>0.7) for the frequency and duration deviants, and moderate for the intensity deviant (ICC=0.6). However, the repeatability of the MMN latency was moderate for the frequency deviant (ICC=0.6) and poor (ICC<0.5) for the duration and intensity deviants. The Optimal-3 paradigm seems to be a good alternative for the traditional oddball paradigm, as it evokes a significantly larger MMN amplitude and shorter latency. This is especially the case for the duration deviant compared to the frequency and intensity deviants.