The Effect of Stimulus Sequence on the Waveform of the Cortical Event-Related Potential

Abstract

The waveform of the cortical event-related potential is extremely sensitive to variations in the sequence of stimuli preceding the eliciting event. The waveform changes were manifested primarily in the amplitudes of the negative component of the potential that peaked at 200 milliseconds, the positive component that peaked at 300 milliseconds, and the slow-wave components. A quantitative model was developed relating the waveform changes to changes in event expectancy. Expectancy is assumed to depend on a decaying memory for events within the prior sequence, the specific structure of the sequence, and the global probability of event occurrence. For stimuli relevant to the task, the less expected the stimulus the larger the amplitudes of late components of the event-related potentials.

Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b

“…Discriminating the target from the standard stimulus produces a robust P300 that increases in amplitude as the target's global and local sequence probability decreases (Duncan-Johnson andDonchin, 1977, 1982;Johnson and Donchin, 1982;Squires et al, 1976). Target stimulus probability effects served as the basis for the suggestion that P300 originates from task conditions involving working memory , and that conscious awareness may be related to stimulus sequence effects (Leuthold and Sommer, 1993;Sommer et al, 1990).…”

Reading between the lines: Event-related brain potentials during natural sentence processing*1

“…While the relationship between P3 amplitude and subjective probability (expectancy) has not been delineated fully, headway has been made in modeling this relationship, particularly when two alternative stimuli are presented in a Bernoulli series (Squires, Wickens, Squires, & Donchin, 1976;Duncan-Johnson & Donchin, 1977;Squires, Petuchowski, Wickens, & Donchin, 1977). In such instances, the P3 component to the less frequent stimulus is consistently larger than to the frequently presented stimulus.…”

The Event-Related Brain Potential as an Index of Information Processing and Cognitive Activity: A Program of Basic Research.

“…The effect of stimulus probability on the P300 has been modeled by K. Squires et al (1976) as a result or the summation of decaying traces of S.-past occurrences of each stimulus. This model implies that the amplitude of the P300 elicited by a task-relevant event depends on the interval between repetitions of that event.…”

“…The criterion may be a certain F value, or number of iterations, asymptotic level, etc. (for a more detailed description of SWDA as applied to ERPs, see Donchin, 1969b;Donchin & Herning, 1975;Horst & Donchin, 1980;Squires and Donchin, 1976).…”

“…In particular, Squires and Donchin (1976), and Johnson andDonchin (1980, 1982) applied SWDA to find which timepoints best classified trials from an oddball paradigm into "rare" and "frequent" categories. The weights obtained with SWDA can be applied to obtain magnitude estimates (e.g.…”