Theory
The mainstream "memory trace" interpretation of MMN is that it is elicited in response to violations of simple rules governing the properties of information. It is thought to arise from violation of an automatically formed, short-term neural model or memory trace of physical or abstract environmental regularities (Näätänen & Winkler, 1999; Näätänen, Paavilainen, Rinne, & Alho 2007). However, other than MMN, there is no other neurophysiological evidence for the formation of the memory representation of those regularities.
Integral to this memory trace view is that there are: i) a population of sensory afferent neuronal elements that respond to sound, and; ii) a separate population of memory neuronal elements that build a neural model of standard stimulation and respond more vigorously when the incoming stimulation violates that neural model, eliciting an MMN.
An alternative "fresh afferent" interpretation (Näätänen, 1992; Jääskeläinen et al., 2004) is that there are no memory neuronal elements, but the sensory afferent neuronal elements that are tuned to properties of the standard stimulation respond less vigorously upon repeated stimulation. Thus when a deviant activates a distinct new population of neuronal elements that is tuned to the different properties of the deviant rather than the standard, these fresh afferents respond more vigorously, eliciting an MMN.
A third view is that the sensory afferents are the memory neurons (Ulanovsky, 2004; Jääskeläinen et al., 2007).
Read more about this topic: Mismatch Negativity
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“The theory seems to be that so long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s chillun, but that as soon as he has any luck he owes it to the Devil.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“It is not enough for theory to describe and analyse, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“A theory if you hold it hard enough
And long enough gets rated as a creed....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)