Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is elicited with para-foveal hemifield oddball stimulation: An event-related brain potential (ERP) study

The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is a component of the human event-related brain potential (ERP) that indicates the automatic processing and detection of changes in the visual sensory input. The study tested whether the vMMN was observable when the visual input is restricted to one visual hemifield and, with this, only para-foveal input to one of the two primary sensory cortices in the visual system is available for stimulus processing. The vMMN was elicited by the stimulation restricted to a small portion of the visual field. This demonstrates that in general vMMN elicitation is not confined to stimulations covering a broad range of the visual field or to the propagation of sensory information to both sensory visual cortices. In addition, the vMMN amplitudes showed a high variability between the different conditions, including non-significant vMMN amplitudes. This suggests that pronounced vMMNs observed in experimental settings relies on salient visual stimuli covering different channels of sensory information in vision.