TY - JOUR TI - Localizing hierarchical prediction errors and precisions during an oddball task with volatility: Computational insights and relationship with psychosocial functioning in healthy individuals Y1 - 2025/02/03/ AV - public VL - 3 N1 - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ID - discovery10205184 N2 - The auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) has been widely used to investigate deficits in early auditory information processing, particularly in psychosis. Predictive coding theories suggest that impairments in sensory learning may arise from disturbances in hierarchical message passing, likely due to aberrant precision-weighting of prediction errors (PEs). This study employed a modified auditory oddball paradigm with varying phases of stability and volatility to disentangle the impact of hierarchical PEs on auditory MMN generation in 43 healthy controls (HCs). Single-trial EEG data were modeled with a hierarchical Bayesian model of learning to identify neural correlates of low-level PEs about tones and high-level PEs about environmental volatility. Our analysis revealed a reduced expression of the auditory MMN in volatile compared to stable phases of the paradigm. Additionally, lower Global Functioning (GF): Social scores were associated with a reduced difference waveform at 332 ms after stimulus presentation across the entire MMN paradigm. Further analysis revealed that this association was present during the volatile phase but not the stable phase of the paradigm. Source reconstruction suggested that the association between the stable difference waveform and psychosocial functioning originated in the left superior temporal gyrus. Finally, we found significant EEG signatures of both low- and high-level PEs and precision ratios. Our findings highlight the value of computational models in understanding the neural mechanisms involved in early auditory information processing and their connection to psychosocial functioning. UR - https://doi.org/10.1162/imag_a_00461 PB - MIT Press JF - Imaging Neuroscience KW - Sensory learning KW - hierarchical Gaussian filter KW - predictive coding KW - EEG KW - functioning A1 - Charlton, Colleen E A1 - Hauke, Daniel J A1 - Wobmann, Michelle A1 - de Bock, Renate A1 - Andreou, Christina A1 - Borgwardt, Stefan A1 - Roth, Volker A1 - Diaconescu, Andreea O ER -