Hippocampus responds to auditory change in rabbits.

Any change or novelty in the auditory environment is potentially important for survival. The cortex has been implicated in the detection of auditory change whereas the hippocampus has been associated with the detection of auditory novelty. Local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded from the CA1 area of the hippocampus in waking rabbits. In the oddball condition, a rare tone of one frequency (deviant) randomly replaced a repeated tone of another frequency (standard). In the equal-probability condition, the standard was replaced by a set of tones of nine different frequencies in order to remove the repetitive auditory background of the deviant (now labelled as control-deviant) while preserving its temporal probability. In the oddball condition, evoked potentials at 36-80 ms post-stimulus were found to have greater amplitude towards negative polarity for the deviant relative to the standard. No significant differences in response amplitudes were observed between the control-deviant and the standard. These findings suggest that the hippocampus plays a role in auditory change detection.

Somatosensory event-related potentials in the rabbit cerebral and cerebellar cortices: a correspondence with mismatch responses in humans.

Somatosensory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the cerebellar (CerCx), somatosensory (SomCx) and visual (VCx) cortices in rabbits in two stimulus conditions. In the oddball condition, airpuffs to two different locations in the rabbit's muzzle corresponded to infrequently presented deviant stimuli (oddball-deviants) interspersed with frequently presented standard stimuli. In the deviant-alone condition, deviants (alone-deviants) were presented without standards. ERPs to oddball-deviants differed significantly from those to standards in CerCx and SomCx, but not in VCx. Furthermore, some of these differences were not found between ERPs to alone-deviants and those to standards. Thus, ERPs to oddball-deviants contributing these differences were dependent on the presence of preceding standards. The results are in line with the elicitation of mismatch negativity-like ERPs to somatosensory changes in humans.

Cortical and subcortical visual event-related potentials to oddball stimuli in rabbits.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) to changes in the visual environment were recorded in rabbits. In the oddball condition, infrequently presented (deviant) stimuli occurred in a series of frequently presented (standard) stimuli. In the deviant-alone condition, standards were omitted. ERPs to oddball-deviants differed from those to standards in all recording sites (cerebellar cortex, visual cortex, dentate gyrus). No corresponding differences were found between ERPs to deviants in the oddball condition and those in the deviant-alone condition. However, because ERPs to deviants in the deviant-alone condition and those to standards did not differ either, ERPs to stimulus changes in the oddball condition seemed to be dependent on the presence of standards, thus representing an analogue to mismatch negativity (MMN) in humans.