Differential effects of gender on mismatch negativity to violations of simple and pattern acoustic regularities

Abstract

Introduction:The effects of gender on the mismatch negativity (MMN) potential have been studied using simple frequency deviants. However, the effects of gender on MMN to violations of abstract regularities have not yet been studied. Here, we addressed this issue and compared the effects of gender on simple and pattern frequency MMNs.Methods: MMN response was recorded from 29 healthy young adults, 14 females (mean age = 26.20 ± 2.17) and 15 males (mean age = 27.57 ± 2.24), using 32 scalp electrodes during simple and pattern frequency oddball paradigms and the mean amplitude, peak latency, and scalp topography of MMN evoked by each paradigm were compared between the two genders. Results:The peak latency of simple MMN was significantly longer in females (p < .05); however, its mean amplitude and topography were similar between the two genders (p > .05). There were no significant differences in peak latency, mean amplitude, and scalp topography of pattern MMN between the two genders (p > .05). Conclusions:Based on the obtained results, gender differently affects simple and pattern MMN. These findings may provide preliminary evidence for distinct effects of gender on various types of MMN.

ERP evidence for emotion-specific congruency effects between sentences and new words with disgust and sadness connotations

“…Meanwhile, future studies could conduct similar investigations on a more gender-balanced participant group to compare the learning and processing of words' emotional connotations between males and females, since gender has been reported to affect the ERP amplitudes (Yang et al, 2016) and latency (Toufan et al, 2021) as well as emotional cognition (Lin et al, 2021). In addition, neutrality could be introduced as a research baseline to further demonstrate the differential processing of words' acquired emotional connotations in sentential contexts.…”