The auditory novelty oddball task now generally includes a class of trial-unique, novel stimuli (animal sounds, musical instruments, environmental sounds), which in turn elicit an early, anterior novelty P3 (Friedman, Simpson, & Hamberger, 1993). Considerable effort has been applied in determining the functional and topographic (and by implication, neuronal generator) properties of this novelty P3, and a strong case has been made for its identification as P3a (Friedman, Cycowicz, & Gaeta, 2001; Polich, 2007; Simons, Graham, Miles, & Chen, 2001; Spencer, Dien, & Donchin, 2001). The idea that novelty P3/P3a reflects frontal attentional processes related to the orienting response (Friedman, Cycowicz, & Gaeta, 2001; Polich, 2007) is also consistent with evidence that novelty P3 (but not P3b following novelty P3) is associated with the electrodermal orienting response (Marinkovic, Halgren, & Maltzman, 2001).
