Concurrent Assessment of Sequential Auditory Event-related Potentials Using an Optimized Paired-stimulus Local-global Paradigm

Comprehensive assessment of auditory processing is crucial for understanding perceptual and attentional functions, as well as detecting related deficits in clinical populations. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) track key stages through time-locked components that emerge from early sensory processing (P1-N1-P2 complex) and automatic deviance detection (mismatch negativity, MMN) to involuntary attention orienting (P3a) and voluntary attention engagement (P3b). However, current approaches predominantly focus on isolated ERP components demonstrated through group-level statistical difference, while paradigms capable of capturing sequential components with high individual sensitivity remain scarce. Here, we optimized the local-global paradigm with paired-stimulus design, strategically capturing pre-attentive to voluntary processing by contrasting responses to within-pair violations (local effect) versus across-pair violations (global effect). We evaluated this paradigm in 30 healthy participants under active (target counting) and passive (visual distraction) conditions. Results demonstrated that both conditions reliably elicited complete pre-attentive components (P1-N1-P2 and MMN) as confirmed by cluster-based permutation tests, achieving 30/30 individual-level sensitivity validated through intrasubject classification analysis. Furthermore, comparison between active and passive conditions revealed significant differences specifically in the 272-392ms and 272-400ms window (p < 0.05) under two levels of global deviants. This contrast successfully dissociated voluntary from involuntary attention with 86.67% and 93.33% individual sensitivity, respectively. Moreover, the active-passive discrimination depended primarily on the number of epochs sampled (p<0.001) rather than the number of sensors used (p>0.05). These findings validate our paired-stimulus local-global paradigm as a reliable approach for assessing sequential auditory ERPs, offering significant advantages with potential applications in clinical evaluation of perceptual and attentional impairments.