Development of a memory trace for a complex sound in the human brain

Abstract

The development of a memory trace for a complex, unfamiliar sound in the human brain was studied by repeatedly presenting reading subjects with this sound ('standard') which was occasionally replaced by a slightly different sound ('deviant'). Deviants did not elicit the mismatch negativity, an index of automatic change detection in auditory cortex, in the beginning but did later during the session. This result reflects a gradual 'sharpening' of sensory information encoded in the memory trace: the representation of the standard stimulus eventually became precise enough to enable the cortical change-detector mechanism to detect a slight different stimulus.