Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to understand how the brain processes auditory input, and to track developmental change in sensory systems. Localizing ERP generators can provide invaluable insights into how and where auditory information is processed. However, age-appropriate infant brain templates have not been available to aid such developmental mapping. In this study, auditory change detection responses of brain ERPs were examined in 6-month-old infants using discrete and distributed source localization methods mapped onto age-appropriate magnetic resonance images. Infants received a passive oddball paradigm using fast-rate non-linguistic auditory stimuli (tone doublets) with the deviant incorporating a pitch change for the second tone. Data was processed using two different high-pass filters. When a 0.5 Hz filter was used, the response to the pitch change was a large frontocentral positive component. When a 3 Hz filter was applied, two temporally consecutive components associated with change detection were seen: one with negative voltage, and another with positive voltage over frontocentral areas. Both components were localized close to the auditory cortex with an additional source near to the anterior cingulate cortex. The sources for the negative response had a more tangential orientation relative to the supratemporal plane compared to the positive response, which showed a more lateral, oblique orientation. The results described here suggest that at 6 months of age infants generate similar response patterns and use analogous cortical areas to that of adults to detect changes in the auditory environment. Moreover, the source locations and orientations, together with waveform topography and morphology provide evidence in infants for feature-specific change detection followed by involuntary switching of attention.
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