Action-induced adjustment of prediction explains no visual mismatch negativity to self-generated deviants

Visual mismatch negativity (VMMN) is an event-related brain potential component elicited by infrequent deviant events embedded among frequent standard events in a visual stimulus sequence. Although VMMN is known to be elicited by deviant events in a stimulus-driven manner, it was recently shown that VMMN can be drastically affected by the participant's voluntary action. With a paradigm in which participants were required to press one button frequently (about 90%) and another button infrequently (10%) in random order, and produce a visual stimulus sequence consisting of deviant and standard events, VMMN was elicited by deviant events triggered by the frequently-performed button press that should generate a standard event, but not by deviant events triggered by the infrequently-performed button press that should generate a corresponding deviant event. The present study replicated these previous findings and further demonstrated that VMMN was elicited by deviant events triggered by the infrequently-performed button press that should generate a different deviant event. These results support the hypothesis that VMMN-generating processes can be adjusted according to the participant's voluntary action, and rule out an alternative hypothesis that VMMN-generating processes are terminated when participants change their action. This adjustment is thought to be implemented so that self-generated deviants that carry no novel information are discarded, while externally-generated deviants that may carry novel information are selectively detected.