The Form and Distribution of Auditory Evoked Potentials and CNVs when Stimuli and Responses are Lateralized

doi:10.1016/S0079-6123(08)61701-X

Progress in Brain Research

Volume 54, 1980, Pages 767-775

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This chapter discusses the form and distribution of auditory evoked potentials and contingent negative variations (CNVs) when stimuli and responses are lateralized. Several studies using monaural stimulation report a degree of hemispheric lateralization of evoked potentials (EPs) manifested by slightly larger amplitudes and/or slightly shorter latencies in the hemisphere contralateral to the stimulated ear. CNVs have not shown consistent asymmetries, but there have been reports of minor asymmetries over central regions in special task situations. Larger amplitudes have been reported over the hemisphere contralateral to the responding hand, or over the speech dominant hemisphere in linguistic tasks. The present study pursues the question of hemisphere involvement in auditory processing and in preparation for motor response. It also examines whether the components treated as N1 warrant the assumption that they reflect a unitary process. Two separate experimental paradigms are used. The first is designed to study the lateralization of both evoked and slow potential components and their interaction. The second concentrate in more detail upon the components of the evoked potential only.

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Cited by (80)

Stimulus intensity effects and sequential processing in the passive auditory ERP
2022, International Journal of Psychophysiology
Citation Excerpt :
The biphasic N1/P2 (and in one instance P1-N1) has been found to increase with stimulus intensity in the moderate intensity range, and so do the separate N1 and P2, in both peaks and PCA components. N1 has been found to have three major ‘exogenous’ subcomponents (Fogarty et al., 2020; Knight et al., 1988; McCallum and Curry, 1980; Näätänen and Picton, 1987; Schröger et al., 2015; Woods, 1995): N1a (~75 ms); N1b (~100 ms); and N1c (~150 ms). It is interesting to note that Adler and Adler (1989) noted three N1 components that all reflected stimulus intensity.
Auditory stimulus intensity of innocuous tones is generally thought to have a direct effect on the amplitude of ERP components, but these effects have rarely been explored across a wide component range, or in multiple paradigms. Here we investigate component sensitivity to stimulus intensity differences in two studies. Study 1 (N = 36) employed a between-participants paradigm in which repeated trains of standard stimuli were presented as 50 or 80 dB SPL 1000 Hz tones. Study 2 (N = 18) used a within-participant presentation of alternating 60 and 80 dB SPL 1000 Hz tones. Electrode caps with 19 channels (referred to linked ears) generated ERPs covering the first 600 ms of each participant's EEG responses; these were submitted to separate temporal PCAs in each study. A similar series of components was obtained in each study: P1, N1a, N1b, N1c, P2, P3a, P3b, nP3, SW1, and SW2; an N2 was found in Study 2 only. Loud tones in Study 1 produced greater amplitudes in all components except SW1. In Study 2, Loud cf. Soft tones produced smaller P1 and nP3, larger N1 components, P2, and P3a, with no effect on N2, P3b, SW1 or SW2. These results indicate similar sequential processes underlying sensory processing in one- and two-stimulus paradigms, with the later stimulus intensity effects varying with paradigm.
The neural processing of pitch accents in continuous speech
2021, Neuropsychologia
Pitch accents are local pitch patterns that convey differences in word prominence and modulate the information structure of the discourse. Despite the importance to discourse in languages like English, neural processing of pitch accents remains understudied. The current study investigates the neural processing of pitch accents by native and non-native English speakers while they are listening to or ignoring 45 min of continuous, natural speech. Leveraging an approach used to study phonemes in natural speech, we analyzed thousands of electroencephalography (EEG) segments time-locked to pitch accents in a prosodic transcription. The optimal neural discrimination between pitch accent categories emerged at latencies between 100 and 200 ms. During these latencies, we found a strong structural alignment between neural and phonetic representations of pitch accent categories. In the same latencies, native listeners exhibited more robust processing of pitch accent contrasts than non-native listeners. However, these group differences attenuated when the speech signal was ignored. We can reliably capture the neural processing of discrete and contrastive pitch accent categories in continuous speech. Our analytic approach also captures how language-specific knowledge and selective attention influences the neural processing of pitch accent categories.
Effects of low- and high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on long-latency auditory evoked potentials
2018, Neuroscience Letters
Long-latency auditory event potentials (LLAEPs) involving local and global auditory processes have been investigated to examine the impact of low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on the cortical excitability of the temporal cortex. We hypothesized that both stimulation frequencies have the same modulation effect, in accordance with clinical data showing a reduction in auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) after LF and HF temporal rTMS in patients with schizophrenia. With 30 right-handed healthy volunteer participants enrolled in a crossover trial, we analyzed LLAEPs before and after LF- and HF-rTMS of the left temporal cortex. While we observed no changes in latencies, we did observe a similar inhibitory action of both rTMS frequencies on LLAEP amplitudes. Analysis of surface potential maps and cortical generators revealed some differences regarding auditory processes: HF-rTMS produced earlier, more diffuse, and more right-lateralized effects than LF-rTMS. Beyond a local impact, rTMS exerted a remote modulation influence on the frontal cortex that might be involved in attentional processes. This association could explain the therapeutic effect of temporal HF-rTMS on AVH.
Similar sound intensity dependence of the N1 and P2 components of the auditory ERP: Averaged and single trial evidence
2016, Clinical Neurophysiology
Citation Excerpt :
This is corroborated by the fact that it is possible to elicit N1-like responses using both the onset and the offset of a given auditory stimulus (Arnott et al., 2011; Hari et al., 1987). At the neuroanatomical level, the N1 was suggested to be a composite wave reflecting the summation of at least three distinct underlying components (McCallum and Curry, 1980; Näätänen and Picton, 1987). Descriptions of the different components underlying the N1 focused on topographical effects from both MEG and ERP data (Crowley and Colrain, 2004).
The literature suggests that the N1 and P2 waves of the auditory ERP are dissociable at the developmental, experimental, and source levels. At the experimental level, inconsistent findings suggest different effects of intensity on the amplitudes of the auditory N1 and P2. Our main goal was to analyze the intensity dependence of the auditory N1 and P2 while controlling for habituation effects.
We examined the intensity dependence of both averaged and single-trial auditory N1 and P2 waves elicited in a repeated-stimulation protocol.
N1 and P2 revealed similar intensity dependence on both standard and filter denoised ERP, with a linear tendency for higher intensities to elicit higher absolute peak amplitudes. At the single-trial level, both waves covary irrespective of stimulus intensity and trial order.
Our results suggest that stimulus intensity variation induces similar effects on both and N1 and P2 and partially contradict previous data that classified the P2 as a non-habituating component.
Our findings contribute to the ongoing discussion on the functional significance of the auditory P2 deflection. In addition, the present work demonstrated the applicability of a filter denoising method for single-trial estimation in the analysis of the experimental effects on auditory ERP components.
Asymmetry of temporal auditory T-complex: Right ear-left hemisphere advantage in Tb timing in children
2015, International Journal of Psychophysiology
To investigate brain asymmetry of the temporal auditory evoked potentials (T-complex) in response to monaural stimulation in children compared to adults.
Ten children (7 to 9 years) and ten young adults participated in the study. All were right-handed. The auditory stimuli used were tones (1100 Hz, 70 dB SPL, 50 ms duration) delivered monaurally (right, left ear) at four different levels of stimulus onset asynchrony (700–1100–1500–3000 ms). Latency and amplitude of responses were measured at left and right temporal sites according to the ear stimulated.
Peaks of the three successive deflections (Na–Ta–Tb) of the T-complex were greater in amplitude and better defined in children than in adults. Amplitude measurements in children indicated that Na culminates on the left hemisphere whatever the ear stimulated whereas Ta and Tb culminate on the right hemisphere but for left ear stimuli only. Peak latency displayed different patterns of asymmetry. Na and Ta displayed shorter latencies for contralateral stimulation. The original finding was that Tb peak latency was the shortest at the left temporal site for right ear stimulation in children. Amplitude increased and/or peak latency decreased with increasing SOA, however no interaction effect was found with recording site or with ear stimulated.
Our main original result indicates a right ear–left hemisphere timing advantage for Tb peak in children. The Tb peak would therefore be a good candidate as an electrophysiological marker of ear advantage effects during dichotic stimulation and of functional inter-hemisphere interactions and connectivity in children.
Subcortical encoding of speech cues in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
2015, Clinical Neurophysiology
Citation Excerpt :
In this study, the observed deficits in active discrimination paradigms were attributed to deficits in subjective perception or usage of temporal information (Gomes et al., 2013). Similar to these results, in Gomes et al. (2012) study, children with ADHD showed smaller amplitudes of the T-complex include a series of peaks in the latency range of 70–160 ms (McCallum and Curry, 1980; Wolpaw and Penry, 1975). This complex was elicited by passive listening to tone bursts stimuli and consists of a small negative peak (Na: 70–80 ms), a positive peak (Ta ∼ 100 ms), followed by a larger negative peak (Tb: 140–160 ms).
There is little information about processing of nonspeech and speech stimuli at the subcortical level in individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The auditory brainstem response (ABR) provides information about the function of the auditory brainstem pathways. We aim to investigate the subcortical function in neural encoding of click and speech stimuli in children with ADHD.
The subjects include 50 children with ADHD and 34 typically developing (TD) children between the ages of 8 and 12 years. Click ABR (cABR) and speech ABR (sABR) with 40 ms synthetic /da/ syllable stimulus were recorded.
Latencies of cABR in waves of III and V and duration of V-Vn (P ⩽ 0.027), and latencies of sABR in waves A, D, E, F and O and duration of V-A (P ⩽ 0.034) were significantly longer in children with ADHD than in TD children. There were no apparent differences in components the sustained frequency following response (FFR).
We conclude that children with ADHD have deficits in temporal neural encoding of both nonspeech and speech stimuli.
There is a common dysfunction in the processing of click and speech stimuli at the brainstem level in children with suspected ADHD.

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The Form and Distribution of Auditory Evoked Potentials and CNVs when Stimuli and Responses are Lateralized

Publisher Summary

Biol. Psychol.

Biol. Psychol.

Electroenceph. Clin. Neurophysiol.

Neuropsychologia

Electroenceph. Clin. Neurophysiol.

Electroenceph. Clin. Neurophysiol.