The goal of this review article is to redefine what the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component of event-related potentials reflects in auditory scene analysis, and to provide an overview of how the MMN serves as a valuable tool in Cognitive Neuroscience research. In doing so, some of the old beliefs (five common ‘myths’) about MMN will be dispelled, such as the notion that MMN is a simple feature discriminator and that attention itself modulates MMN elicitation. A revised description of what MMN truly reflects will be provided, which includes a principal focus onto the highly context-dependent nature of MMN elicitation and new terminology to discuss MMN and attention. This revised framework will help clarify what has been a long line of seemingly contradictory results from studies in which behavioral ability to hear differences between sounds and passive elicitation of MMN have been inconsistent. Understanding what MMN is will also benefit clinical research efforts by providing a new picture of how to design appropriate paradigms suited to various clinical populations.

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Stream segregation is the process by which the auditory system disentangles the mixture of sound inputs into discrete sources that cohere across time. The length of time required for this to occur is termed the “buildup” period. In the current study, we used the buildup period as an index of how quickly sounds are segregated into constituent parts. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that stimulus context impacts the timing of the buildup and, therefore, affects when stream segregation is detected. To measure the timing of the buildup we recorded the Mismatch Negativity component (MMN) of event-related brain potentials (ERPs), during passive listening, to determine when the streams were neurophysiologically segregated. In each condition, a pattern of repeating low (L) and high (H) tones (L-L-H) was presented in trains of stimuli separated by silence, with the H tones forming a simple intensity oddball paradigm and the L tones serving as distractors. To determine the timing of the buildup, probe tones occurred in two positions of the trains, early (within the buildup period) and late (past the buildup period). The context was manipulated by presenting roving vs. non-roving frequencies across trains in two conditions. MMNs were elicited by intensity probe tones in the Non-Roving condition (early and late positions) and the Roving condition (late position only) indicating that neurophysiologic segregation occurred faster in the Non-Roving condition. This suggests a shorter buildup period when frequency was repeated from train to train. Overall, our results demonstrate that the dynamics of the environment influence the way in which the auditory system extracts regularities from the input. The results support the hypothesis that the buildup to segregation is highly dependent upon stimulus context and that the auditory system works to maintain a consistent representation of the environment when no new information suggests that reanalyzing the scene is necessary.

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