P300 and slow wave: The effects of reaction time quartile

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 25 adolescents in a modification of the odd-ball paradigm. On alternate blocks subjects were required to detect either a missing stimulus or a change in pitch, each of which occurred 17% of the time and was embedded in a series of background tone pips (66% occurrence). The study was designed to assess the relationship between P300 and Slow Wave elicited by two infrequent targets which differed in the amount of temporal uncertainty (and thus, equivocation) associated with them. Principal components analyses (PCAs) were used in an attempt to reduce overlap among components. Stimulus-synchronized (SSA) and response-synchronized (RSA) averages were computed for correct trials only in association with the first (Q1) and fourth (Q4) reaction time (RT) quartiles. Measurement of the SSAs replicated the results of Roth, Ford and Kopell (1978): P300 amplitude was larger in Q1 than in Q4, while Slow Wave amplitude increased in Q4 relative to Q1. In the RSAs for Slow Wave, only the frontally negative aspect remained larger in Q4 than in Q1, while the parietally positive component did not differ between quartiles. The PCA basis waves showed that the major portions of P300 and Slow Wave followed response execution, thus precluding their involvement in the discrimination process per se. These results support the functional dissociation of P300 and Slow Wave and the functional independence of the frontal and parietal aspects of Slow Wave.

[1]  T W Picton,et al.  Temporal and sequential probability in evoked potential studies. , 1981, Canadian journal of psychology.

[2]  C. C. Wood,et al.  The ɛ-Adjustment Procedure for Repeated-Measures Analyses of Variance , 1976 .

[3]  H G Vaughan,et al.  The scalp topography of potentials in auditory and visual Go/NoGo tasks. , 1977, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[4]  P. Michie,et al.  Different Variants of Endogenous Negative Brain Potentials in Performance Situations: A Review and Classification , 1979 .

[5]  Daniel S. Ruchkin,et al.  Principles of Neurobiological Signal Analysis , 1976 .

[6]  N. Squires,et al.  Two varieties of long-latency positive waves evoked by unpredictable auditory stimuli in man. , 1975, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[7]  D. Ruchkin,et al.  Emitted P potentials and temporal unvertainty , 1978 .

[8]  H G Vaughan,et al.  Association cortex potentials and reaction time in auditory discrimination. , 1972, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[9]  B S Kopell,et al.  Long-latency evoked potentials and reaction time. , 1978, Psychophysiology.

[10]  W. Dixon.  BMD : biomedical computer programs , 1967 .

[11]  E. T. Klemmer.  Time uncertainty in simple reaction time. , 1956, Journal of experimental psychology.

[12]  R. Näätänen,et al.  Stimulus deviance and evoked potentials , 1982, Biological Psychology.

[13]  Herbert G. Vaughan,et al.  Chapter 4 – The Analysis of Scalp-Recorded Brain Potentials , 1974 .

[14]  M. L. Kietzman,et al.  Slow wave and P300 in signal detection. , 1980, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[15]  D. Friedman,et al.  Stimulus and response related components of the late positive complex in visual discrimination tasks. , 1978, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[16]  T W Picton,et al.  The component structure of the human event-related potentials. , 1980, Progress in brain research.

[17]  S Sutton,et al.  Emitted P300 and slow wave event-related potentials in guessing and detection tasks. , 1980, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[18]  W. R. Goff,et al.  Distribution of the human average movement potential. , 1973, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[19]  D Friedman,et al.  A brain event related to the making of a sensory discrimination. , 1979, Science.

[20]  S Sutton,et al.  P300 and slow wave in a message consisting of two events. , 1982, Psychophysiology.

[21]  H Shibasaki,et al.  Cortical potentials following voluntary and passive finger movements. , 1980, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[22]  H Shibasaki,et al.  Components of the movement-related cortical potential and their scalp topography. , 1980, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[23]  G. McCarthy,et al.  On the influence of task relevance and stimulus probability on event-related-potential components. , 1977, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.