Postersession 2
Poster #: 8
Topic: Attention and distraction
Thursday, Sep 10, 2015
14:30-16:00
1st floor
Auditory selective attention in the auditory brainstem response, negative difference, processing negativity, and positive difference waves
Center for the Research and Support of Educational Practice, Tokyo Gakugei University, Tokyo, Japan
kazunari@u-gakugei.ac.jp
In the attentional trace theory (Näätänen, 1982, 1990), a representation for an attention channel in audition was considered to be maintained at the auditory cortices. According to this theory, no representation for a perceptual channel should be established at the subcortical structures. The present study recorded the auditory brainstem response (ABR), Negative difference (Nd), Processing Negativity (PN), and Positive difference (Pd) waves during a dichotic listening task, and then examined whether these physiological measures represented perceptual channels in tasks.
Twelve right-handed participants performed dichotic listening tasks in which standard (P = 0.99) and target tones to one ear had frequencies respectively at 0.5 and 0.6 kHz while those stimuli to the other ear at 1 and 1.2 kHz (35 dB SL, SOA 180-320 ms). Each participant received two dichotic combinations; (1) 0.5 kHz to the left and 1 kHz to the right, (2) 1 kHz to the left and 0.5 kHz to the right. In a control condition, participants viewed a silent DVD program and ignored the dichotic stimulation. Recording sessions revealing the explicit Nd were preferentially applied to data analysis.
The Nd, PN and Pd were symmetrically found for the two dichotic combinations of sounds. A significant difference in the ABR between relevant and irrelevant conditions was found only for the 0.5 kHz to the left and 1 kHz to the right condition. The ABR difference between irrelevant and control conditions was absent. The present results suggest the difficulty to represent perceptual channels during dichotic tasks at the brainstem.