Encoding of deterministic and stochastic auditory rules in the human brain: The mismatch negativity mechanism does not reflect basic probability

Regularities in a sequence of sounds can be automatically encoded in a predictive model by the auditory system. When a sound deviates from the one predicted by the model, a mismatch negativity (MMN) is elicited, which is taken to reflect a prediction error at a particular level of the model hierarchy. Although there are many studies on deterministic regularities, only a few have investigated the brain's ability to encode non-deterministic...