Acoustic features and acoustic changes are represented by different central pathways.

The central processing of acoustic stimulus changes can be observed neurophysiologically in the mismatch negativity auditory evoked potential (MMN). Stimuli differing in interaural phase were used to investigate the contributions of the primary and non-primary auditory pathways to the encoding of binaural stimuli and to investigate passively elicited measures of binaural processing in experimental animals. In guinea pigs, the MMN was obtained in response to 1000 Hz tones embedded in white noise (S:N = 2 dB). Using a modified oddball paradigm (that is, two stimuli presented in a series, each with a different probability of occurrence), stimuli were presented binaurally with both the tone and noise in-phase to the two ears (S0N0) as the standard stimulus ans the tone 180 degrees out-of-phase (S(PI)N0) as the deviant stimulus. The MMN, by definition, should occur only in response to a change, or 'mismatch,' between the standard and deviant stimuli. The response to the deviant stimulus in the oddball paradigm was compared to the response to the same stimulus when presented in a series alone. The responses to S0N0 and S(PI)N0 collected in a series alone, termed the intrinsic responses, were also compared. Responses were recorded from two surface epidural electrodes - one at the posterior midline and one over the left temporal lobe. AEPs from these locations have been shown to reflect the activity of primary and non-primary thalamo-cortical pathways respectively. A significant MMN was observed at the midline electrode, but no MMN was observed over the temporal lobe.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)