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.