Change detection and difference detection of tone duration discrimination

An event-related potential called mismatch negativity is known to exhibit physiological evidence of sensory memory. Mismatch negativity is believed to represent complicated neuronal mechanisms in a variety of animals and in humans. We employed the auditory oddball paradigm varying sound durations and observed two types of duration mismatch negativity in anesthetized guinea pigs. One was a duration mismatch negativity whose increase in peak amplitude occurred immediately after onset of the stimulus difference in a decrement oddball paradigm. The other exhibited a peak amplitude increase closer to the offset of the longer stimulus in an increment oddball paradigm. These results demonstrated a mechanism to percept the difference of duration change and revealed the importance of the end of a stimulus for this perception.