An-Li Wang, PhD

When ERPs are elicited by pairs or trains of stimuli delivered at short inter‐stimulus intervals (ISIs), the magnitude of the ERP elicited by the repeated stimuli is markedly reduced, a phenomenon known as response decrement. While the interval between two consecutive stimuli becomes longer, the reduced response is recovered. Thus, this phenomenon has been traditionally interpreted in terms of neural refractoriness of generators of ERPs (“neural refractoriness hypothesis”). A series of my ERP studies, however, challenge this neural refractoriness hypothesis by manipulating the preceding events of the eliciting stimulus.