Developmental Changes of Visual Mismatch Negativity

The mismatch negativity component, MMN, is an event-related potential (ERP) corresponding to the difference between evoked brain potentials elicited by standard-pattern stimuli and rare deviant stimuli differing from the above ones in some feature. Therefore, the MMN is a pre-attentive change-specific ERP component well defined for the case of auditory modality. Recently, several studies have examined MMN for the visual modality, but there are few reports on the developmental changes in this potential in children. In our work, the MMN was studied using a part of Ramachandran pattern (image of a ball with white/black or black-white upper and lower parts) in 107 (55 males and 52 females) normal subjects aged 2 to 27 years. Developmental changes in the visual MMN latency were examined. The mean value of this parameter in 2- to 3-year-old children was 394 +/- 58 mseN (M +/- s.d.); it decreased with increasing age, up to about 16 years, and then stabilized, reaching 273 +/- 32 msec. These findings indicate that the cognitive function of children improves rapidly until 16 years of age. The visual MMN latency may assist in the evaluation of cognitive function development, such as pre-attentional processing.