ON and OFF components in the auditory evoked potential

Abstract

It has been suggested that the ON and OFF components of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) may be mediated by independent physiological mechanisms and that the response to a brief tone consists of overlapping ON and OFF responses. Two experiments were performed to evaluate these proposals. First, AEPs were recorded to tonebursts of various durations presented at a fixed rate. As the tonebursts were made longer, they evoked smaller ON· responses and larger OFF responses, particularly when either response followed the other by less than 5 sec. This indicates that ON and OFF responses are not physiologically independent. Second, the AEP to a 25-msec tone was compared with the ON response to a 2,000-msec tone. At an interstimulus interval of 4 sec, the difference wave formed by subtracting the latter AEP from the former contained clear N, (ca. 100 msec) and P2 (ca. 180 msec) components, which have been interpreted as an OFF response by some authors. These components in the difference wave were greatly reduced or even inverted at 10-sec interstimulus intervals, however, where interactions between ON and OFF responses to~uccessive stimuli were minimized. This result indicates that any residual OFF response in the AEP to a brief tone is very small in amplitude, if present at all.Changes in the intensity, frequency, or location of an auditory stimulus evoke a negative-positive .sequence of waves from the vertex region of the scalp, with latencies in the 50-250-msec range. The most prominent components in this auditory evoked potential (AEP) are the N, (peaking at 50-150 msec) and P1 (150-250 msec) waves. The N,-P 1 complex, or

Temporal location effect of noise burst intensity on auditory evoked potentials

“…These results would appear to indicate that the OFF-response was not as important as the ON-response in the evoked potentials to a sound with short durations of less than 50 msec. This interpretation seems to coincide with the findings of Hillyard and Picton (1978) and Onishi and Davis (1968), who reported that the OFF-response to a brief sound, if present at all, was very small. Thus, the results obtained in Experiment 1 would seem to be attributable not to the effect of the OFF-response but to the temporal location effect of plateau intensity.…”

Sound offset-related brain potentials show retained sensory processing, but increased cognitive control activity in older adults

“…ERP waveforms elicited by onsets and offsets are largely similar (Davis and Zerlin, 1966;Hillyard and Picton, 1978;Onishi and Davis, 1968). The magnetic reflections of these ERPs have overlapping generator structures according to some studies (Hari et al, 1987;Pantev et al, 1996;Yamashiro et al, 2011), whereas others (Noda et al, 1998) suggest the involvement of separate structures.…”

Attention‐dependent sound offset‐related brain potentials

“…Horváth (2014b) suggested that the interplay of attention and distraction was also reflected in the ERPs elicited by sound offsets. Sound offsets elicit waveforms similar to those elicited by tone onsets (Davis & Zerlin, 1966;Hillyard & Picton, 1978;Onishi & Davis, 1978), and the offset-and onset-related N1s, and offset-and onset-related P2s respectively originate from overlapping sources as evidenced by MEG recordings (Hari, Pelizzone, Mäkelä, Hällström, Leinonen, & Lounasmaa, 1987;Pantev, Eulitz, Hampson, Ross, & Roberts, 1996;Yamashiro, Inui, Otsuru, & Kakigi, 2011, but see Noda et al, 1998. Animal studies demonstrated that there is a high proportion of offset-sensitive neurons in the auditory cortex (see e.g.…”

“…This allowed testing, whether the attention-dependent offset ERP showed an amplitude increase with tone duration, which is characteristic for offset-responses obtained in passive settings (Hillyard & Picton, 1978).…”