Oddball paradigm

Last updated

The oddball paradigm is an experimental design used within psychology research. Presentations of sequences of repetitive stimuli are infrequently interrupted by a deviant stimulus. The reaction of the participant to this "oddball" stimulus is recorded.

Contents

The oddball paradigm is one of the commonly used experimental paradigms for Event-Related Potential (ERP) studies. In the classic oddball paradigm, two types of stimuli affecting the same sensory channel are presented randomly within an experiment, with a significant difference in the probability of occurrence. The more frequently occurring stimulus is called the standard stimulus, which serves as the background of the entire experiment; the less frequent and sporadic stimulus is known as the deviant stimulus. Since the physical properties of the two stimuli are very similar, the deviant stimulus appears as a deviation from the frequently occurring standard stimulus, hence the names "standard stimulus" and "deviant stimulus." In the classic Oddball paradigm, the deviant stimulus typically has an occurrence probability of about 20%, while the standard stimulus has a probability of about 80%.

In the classical oddball paradigm, if participants are asked to respond to a deviant stimulus, the deviant stimulus is the target stimulus at that point. Classical Oddball Paradigm.png
In the classical oddball paradigm, if participants are asked to respond to a deviant stimulus, the deviant stimulus is the target stimulus at that point.

Use in ERP research

The oddball method was first used in event-related potential (ERP) research by Nancy Squires, Kenneth Squires and Steven Hillyard at the UC San Diego. [1]

The P300 response of different healthy subjects in a two-tone auditory oddball paradigm. The plots show the average response to oddball (red) and standard (blue) trials and their difference (black). From Surprise response as a probe for compressed memory states. These examples show the significant individual variability in amplitude, latency and waveform shape across different subjects. P300 response of different subjects.png
The P300 response of different healthy subjects in a two-tone auditory oddball paradigm. The plots show the average response to oddball (red) and standard (blue) trials and their difference (black). From Surprise response as a probe for compressed memory states. These examples show the significant individual variability in amplitude, latency and waveform shape across different subjects.

In ERP research it has been found that an event-related potential across the parieto-central area of the skull that usually occurs around 300 ms after stimuli presentation called P300 is larger after the target stimulus. The P300 wave only occurs if the subject is actively engaged in the task of detecting the targets. Its amplitude varies with the improbability of the targets. Its latency varies with the difficulty of discriminating the target stimulus from the standard stimuli. [3]

Detection of these targets reliably evokes transient activity in prefrontal cortical regions. Measuring hemodynamic brain activity in the prefrontal cortex using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is associated with dynamic changes in the mapping of stimuli to responses (e.g. response strategies), independently of any changes in behavior. [4]

Since P300 has been shown to be an attention-dependent cognitive component in wakefulness, one might suppose that it would be absent during sleep; a time in which information processing of external stimuli is commonly thought to be inhibited. Research to date indicates that P300 can be recorded during the transition to sleep and then reappears in REM sleep. Stimuli that are rare and intrusive are more likely to elicit the classic parietal P300 in REM sleep. There is, however, little or no positivity at frontal sites. This is consistent with brain imaging studies that show frontal deactivation is characteristic of REM sleep. These findings indicate that while sleepers may be able to detect stimulus deviance in stage 1 and REM, the frontal contribution to consciousness may be lost. [5]

Studies of cognition often use an oddball paradigm to study effects of stimulus novelty and significance on information processing. However, an oddball tends to be perceptually more novel than the standard, repeated stimulus as well as more relevant to the ongoing task, making it difficult to disentangle effects due to perceptual novelty and stimulus significance. Evaluating different brain ERPs can decipher this effect. A frontro-central N2 component of ERP is primarily affected by perceptual novelty, whereas only the centro-parietal P3 component is modulated by both stimulus significance and novelty. [6]

The classic auditory oddball paradigm can be modified to produce different neural responses and can therefore be used to investigate dysfunctions in sensory and cognitive processing in clinical samples. [7]

A unique application of the oddball paradigm is being used heavily in Schizophrenia research to study the effects in neuronal generator patterns in continuous recognition memory, and the endophenotypes, which provide model on genetic relation of psychiatric diseases that represents phenotypes between manifest clinical syndrome and genetic underpinnings. [8]

Other uses

The oddball paradigm has been extended to use outside of ERP research.

The oddball paradigm has robust effects on pupil dilation that is produced by transient activity of the subcortical locus coeruleus. [9] [10] This pupil dilation effect is discussed to indicate a detection of stimulus salience [11] and is expected to amplify the sensory processing of the salient stimulus by increased neural gain. [12] [13]

The perception of time seems to be modulated by our recent experiences. Humans typically overestimate the perceived duration of the initial event in a stream of identical events. Initial studies suggested that this oddball-induced “subjective time dilation” expanded the perceived duration of oddball stimuli by 30–50% but subsequent research has reported more modest expansion of around 10% or less, and the direction of the effect, whether the viewer perceives an increase or a decrease in duration, also seems to be dependent upon the stimulus used. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Event-related potential</span> Brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event

An event-related potential (ERP) is the measured brain response that is the direct result of a specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event. More formally, it is any stereotyped electrophysiological response to a stimulus. The study of the brain in this way provides a noninvasive means of evaluating brain functioning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Locus coeruleus</span> Stress and panic response centre

The locus coeruleus (LC), also spelled locus caeruleus or locus ceruleus, is a nucleus in the pons of the brainstem involved with physiological responses to stress and panic. It is a part of the reticular activating system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auditory cortex</span> Part of the temporal lobe of the brain

The auditory cortex is the part of the temporal lobe that processes auditory information in humans and many other vertebrates. It is a part of the auditory system, performing basic and higher functions in hearing, such as possible relations to language switching. It is located bilaterally, roughly at the upper sides of the temporal lobes – in humans, curving down and onto the medial surface, on the superior temporal plane, within the lateral sulcus and comprising parts of the transverse temporal gyri, and the superior temporal gyrus, including the planum polare and planum temporale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reticular formation</span> Spinal trigeminal nucleus

The reticular formation is a set of interconnected nuclei that are located in the brainstem, hypothalamus, and other regions. It is not anatomically well defined, because it includes neurons located in different parts of the brain. The neurons of the reticular formation make up a complex set of networks in the core of the brainstem that extend from the upper part of the midbrain to the lower part of the medulla oblongata. The reticular formation includes ascending pathways to the cortex in the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) and descending pathways to the spinal cord via the reticulospinal tracts.

The orienting response (OR), also called orienting reflex, is an organism's immediate response to a change in its environment, when that change is not sudden enough to elicit the startle reflex. The phenomenon was first described by Russian physiologist Ivan Sechenov in his 1863 book Reflexes of the Brain, and the term was coined by Ivan Pavlov, who also referred to it as the Shto takoye? reflex. The orienting response is a reaction to novel or significant stimuli. In the 1950s the orienting response was studied systematically by the Russian scientist Evgeny Sokolov, who documented the phenomenon called "habituation", referring to a gradual "familiarity effect" and reduction of the orienting response with repeated stimulus presentations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">P300 (neuroscience)</span> Event-related potential

The P300 (P3) wave is an event-related potential (ERP) component elicited in the process of decision making. It is considered to be an endogenous potential, as its occurrence links not to the physical attributes of a stimulus, but to a person's reaction to it. More specifically, the P300 is thought to reflect processes involved in stimulus evaluation or categorization.

The kappa effect or perceptual time dilation is a temporal perceptual illusion that can arise when observers judge the elapsed time between sensory stimuli applied sequentially at different locations. In perceiving a sequence of consecutive stimuli, subjects tend to overestimate the elapsed time between two successive stimuli when the distance between the stimuli is sufficiently large, and to underestimate the elapsed time when the distance is sufficiently small.

The mismatch negativity (MMN) or mismatch field (MMF) is a component of the event-related potential (ERP) to an odd stimulus in a sequence of stimuli. It arises from electrical activity in the brain and is studied within the field of cognitive neuroscience and psychology. It can occur in any sensory system, but has most frequently been studied for hearing and for vision, in which case it is abbreviated to vMMN. The (v)MMN occurs after an infrequent change in a repetitive sequence of stimuli For example, a rare deviant (d) stimulus can be interspersed among a series of frequent standard (s) stimuli. In hearing, a deviant sound can differ from the standards in one or more perceptual features such as pitch, duration, loudness, or location. The MMN can be elicited regardless of whether someone is paying attention to the sequence. During auditory sequences, a person can be reading or watching a silent subtitled movie, yet still show a clear MMN. In the case of visual stimuli, the MMN occurs after an infrequent change in a repetitive sequence of images.

Echoic memory is the sensory memory that registers specific to auditory information (sounds). Once an auditory stimulus is heard, it is stored in memory so that it can be processed and understood. Unlike most visual memory, where a person can choose how long to view the stimulus and can reassess it repeatedly, auditory stimuli are usually transient and cannot be reassessed. Since echoic memories are heard once, they are stored for slightly longer periods of time than iconic memories. Auditory stimuli are received by the ear one at a time before they can be processed and understood.

The contingent negative variation (CNV) is a negative slow surface potential, as measured by electroencephalography (EEG), that occurs during the period between a warning stimulus or signal and an imperative ("go") stimulus. The CNV was one of the first event-related potential (ERP) components to be described. The CNV component was first described by W. Grey Walter and colleagues in an article published in Nature in 1964. The importance of this finding was that it was one of the first studies which showed that consistent patterns of the amplitude of electric responses could be obtained from the large background noise which occurs in EEG recordings and that this activity could be related to a cognitive process such as expectancy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pupillary response</span> Physiological response that varies the size of the pupil

Pupillary response is a physiological response that varies the size of the pupil, via the optic and oculomotor cranial nerve.

In neuroscience, the N100 or N1 is a large, negative-going evoked potential measured by electroencephalography ; it peaks in adults between 80 and 120 milliseconds after the onset of a stimulus, and is distributed mostly over the fronto-central region of the scalp. It is elicited by any unpredictable stimulus in the absence of task demands. It is often referred to with the following P200 evoked potential as the "N100-P200" or "N1-P2" complex. While most research focuses on auditory stimuli, the N100 also occurs for visual, olfactory, heat, pain, balance, respiration blocking, and somatosensory stimuli.

Auditory spatial attention is a specific form of attention, involving the focusing of auditory perception to a location in space.

The P3a, or novelty P3, is a component of time-locked (EEG) signals known as event-related potentials (ERP). The P3a is a positive-going scalp-recorded brain potential that has a maximum amplitude over frontal/central electrode sites with a peak latency falling in the range of 250–280 ms. The P3a has been associated with brain activity related to the engagement of attention and the processing of novelty.

In neuroscience, the visual P200 or P2 is a waveform component or feature of the event-related potential (ERP) measured at the human scalp. Like other potential changes measurable from the scalp, this effect is believed to reflect the post-synaptic activity of a specific neural process. The P2 component, also known as the P200, is so named because it is a positive going electrical potential that peaks at about 200 milliseconds after the onset of some external stimulus. This component is often distributed around the centro-frontal and the parieto-occipital areas of the scalp. It is generally found to be maximal around the vertex of the scalp, however there have been some topographical differences noted in ERP studies of the P2 in different experimental conditions.

The N200, or N2, is an event-related potential (ERP) component. An ERP can be monitored using a non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) cap that is fitted over the scalp on human subjects. An EEG cap allows researchers and clinicians to monitor the minute electrical activity that reaches the surface of the scalp from post-synaptic potentials in neurons, which fluctuate in relation to cognitive processing. EEG provides millisecond-level temporal resolution and is therefore known as one of the most direct measures of covert mental operations in the brain. The N200 in particular is a negative-going wave that peaks 200-350ms post-stimulus and is found primarily over anterior scalp sites. Past research focused on the N200 as a mismatch detector, but it has also been found to reflect executive cognitive control functions, and has recently been used in the study of language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">P3b</span>

The P3b is a subcomponent of the P300, an event-related potential (ERP) component that can be observed in human scalp recordings of brain electrical activity. The P3b is a positive-going amplitude peaking at around 300 ms, though the peak will vary in latency from 250 to 500 ms or later depending upon the task and on the individual subject response. Amplitudes are typically highest on the scalp over parietal brain areas.

The N170 is a component of the event-related potential (ERP) that reflects the neural processing of faces, familiar objects or words. Furthermore, the N170 is modulated by prediction error processes.

N2pc refers to an ERP component linked to selective attention. The N2pc appears over visual cortex contralateral to the location in space to which subjects are attending; if subjects pay attention to the left side of the visual field, the N2pc appears in the right hemisphere of the brain, and vice versa. This characteristic makes it a useful tool for directly measuring the general direction of a person's attention with fine-grained temporal resolution.

Pre-attentive processing is the subconscious accumulation of information from the environment. All available information is pre-attentively processed. Then, the brain filters and processes what is important. Information that has the highest salience or relevance to what a person is thinking about is selected for further and more complete analysis by conscious (attentive) processing. Understanding how pre-attentive processing works is useful in advertising, in education, and for prediction of cognitive ability.

References

  1. ↑ Squires NK, Squires KC, Hillyard SA (April 1975). "Two varieties of long-latency positive waves evoked by unpredictable auditory stimuli in man". Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 38 (4): 387–401. doi:10.1016/0013-4694(75)90263-1. PMID   46819.
  2. ↑ Levi-Aharoni, Hadar; Shriki, Oren; Tishby, Naftali (2020-02-03). "Surprise response as a probe for compressed memory states". PLOS Computational Biology. 16 (2): e1007065. Bibcode:2020PLSCB..16E7065L. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007065 . ISSN   1553-7358. PMC   7018098 . PMID   32012146.
  3. ↑ Picton TW (1992). "The P300 wave of the human event-related potential". J Clin Neurophysiol. 9 (4): 456–79. doi:10.1097/00004691-199210000-00002. PMID   1464675. S2CID   9193151.
  4. ↑ Huettel S, McCarthy G (2004). "What is odd about the odd-ball task? Prefrontal cortex is activated by dynamic changes in response strategy". Neuropsychologia. 42 (3): 379–386. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.07.009. PMID   14670576. S2CID   12374811.
  5. ↑ Cote KA (2002). "Probing awareness during sleep with the auditory odd-ball paradigm". International Journal of Psychophysiology. 46 (3): 227–241. doi:10.1016/s0167-8760(02)00114-9. PMID   12445950.
  6. ↑ Ferrari VJ (2010). "Detecting Novelty and Significance". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 22 (2): 404–411. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21244. PMC   3612945 . PMID   19400680.
  7. ↑ İşoğlu-Alkaç Ü (2007). "EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS DURING AUDITORY ODDBALL, AND COMBINED AUDITORY ODDBALL–VISUAL PARADIGMS". International Journal of Neuroscience. 117 (4): 487–506. doi:10.1080/00207450600773509. PMID   17380607. S2CID   2420962.
  8. ↑ "Beyond the Oddball in Schizophrenia Research: Neurophysiologic Studies of Memory and Language Processing. (2010)". Psychophysiology. 47: S10–S11. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.01099.x.
  9. ↑ Murphy, P. R., O'Connell, R. G., O'Sullivan, M., Robertson, I. H., & Balsters, J. H. (2014). Pupil diameter covaries with BOLD activity in human locus coeruleus. Human Brain Mapping, 35(8), 4140-4154.
  10. ↑ Joshi, S., Li, Y., Kalwani, Rishi M., & Gold, Joshua I. (2016). Relationships between Pupil Diameter and Neuronal Activity in the Locus Coeruleus, Colliculi, and Cingulate Cortex. Neuron, 89(1), 221-234. doi : 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.11.028
  11. ↑ Vazey, E. M., Moorman, D. E., & Aston-Jones, G. (2018). Phasic locus coeruleus activity regulates cortical encoding of salience information. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(40), E9439-E9448.
  12. ↑ Mather, M., Clewett, D., Sakaki, M., & Harley, C. W. (2016). Norepinephrine ignites local hotspots of neuronal excitation: How arousal amplifies selectivity in perception and memory. Behavioral and brain sciences, 39, e200-e200. doi : 10.1017/S0140525X15000667
  13. ↑ Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2005). An integrative theory of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine function: adaptive gain and optimal performance. Annu. Rev. Neurosci., 28, 403-450.
  14. ↑ Aaen-Stockdale C, Hotchkiss J, Heron J, Whitaker D (June 2011). "Perceived time is spatial frequency dependent". Vision Research. 51 (11): 1232–8. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2011.03.019. PMC   3121949 . PMID   21477613.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.