Neural field theory of adaptive effects on auditory evoked responses and mismatch negativity in multifrequency stimulus sequences.

Physiologically based neural field theory (NFT) of the corticothalamic system, including adaptation, is used to calculate the responses evoked by trains of auditory stimuli that differ in frequency. In oddball paradigms, fully distinguishable frequencies lead to different standard (common stimulus) and deviant (rare stimulus) responses; the signal obtained by subtracting the standard response from the deviant is termed the mismatch negativity (MMN). In this analysis, deviant responses are found to correspond to unadapted cortex, whereas the part of auditory cortex that processes the standard stimuli adapts over several stimulus presentations until the final standard response form is achieved.

Neural Field Theory of Corticothalamic Prediction With Control Systems Analysis.

Neural field theory is used to model and analyze realistic corticothalamic responses to simple visual stimuli. This yields system transfer functions that embody key features in common with those of engineering control systems, which enables interpretation of brain dynamics in terms of data filters. In particular, these features assist in finding internal signals that represent input stimuli and their changes, which are exactly the types of quantities used in control systems to enable prediction of future input signals, and adjustment of gains which is argued to be the analog of attention in control theory.