AUTHOR=Mento Giovanni TITLE=The passive CNV: carving out the contribution of task-related processes to expectancy JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=7 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00827 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2013.00827 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=

In this perspective article, I summarized certain theoretical and methodological issues concerning the investigation of the contribution of cognitive and motor processes to the electrophysiological stimulus-preceding activity. In particular, the question of whether the contingent negative variation (CNV) is a marker reflecting both cognitive expectancy and motor preparation in the S1–S2 paradigms was discussed. New evidence suggests that it is possible to isolate an automatic temporal expectancy-related cognitive mechanism relying on a passive CNV after ruling out the contribution of task-related processes, including motor and decisional processes, to it. This can be achieved by simply manipulating the trial temporal structure according to a probabilistic, oddball distribution. The scientific value of this finding is framed within a historical perspective in the attempt to bridge together the classic literature linking the CNV to stimulus preparation and the more recently published literature linking the CNV to temporal processing.