Event-related potentials (ERPs) to synthetic consonant–vowel syllables were recorded. Infrequent changes in such a syllable elicited a "mismatch negativity" as well as an enhanced N100 component of the ERP even when subjects did not pay attention to the stimuli. Both components are probably generated in the supratemporal auditory cortex suggesting that in these areas there are neural networks that are automatically activated by speech-specific auditory stimulus features such as formant transitions.