Background The N200 component of event related potentials (ERPs) is considered an index of monitoring error related responses. The aim of the present work was to study the effect of mismatch conditions on the subjects' responses in an auditory identification task and their relation to the N200 of stimulus-locked ERPs. Methods An auditory identification task required to correctly map a horizontal slider onto an active frequency range by selecting a slider position that matched the stimulus tone in each trial. Fourteen healthy volunteers participated in the study and ERPs were recorded by 32 leads. Results Results showed that the subjects' erroneous responses were equally distributed within trials, but were dependent on mismatch conditions, generated by large differences between the frequencies of the tones of consecutive trials. Erroneous trials showed a significantly greater negativity within the time window of 164-191 ms after stimulus, located mainly at the Cz and Fz electrodes. The LORETA solution showed that maximum activations, as well as maximum differences, were localized mainly at the frontal lobe. Conclusions These findings suggest that the fronto-central N200 component, conceived an index of "reorientation of attention", represents a correlate of an error signal, being produced when representation of the actual response and the required response are compared. Furthermore the magnitude of the amplitude of the N200 rests on the relation between the present and the previous stimulus.
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