Abstract
Publisher Summary This chapter reviews physiological studies on human auditory attention with emphasis on both passive and active attention. These studies mainly involve event-related brain potentials (ERP) and some magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and regional cerebral blood-flow (rCBF) studies have also been presented. ERPs or evoked potentials (EP) are discrete and minute electrical potentials, which appear in the electroencephalogram (EEG). They are usually caused by and time-locked to sensory stimuli. These small changes in the EEG are normally obscured by much larger spontaneous brain waves and rhythms. The ERP consists of a sequence of positive and negative waves or peaks. At any point in time, multiple cerebral processes may contribute to the ERP waveform. ERP studies on passive attention suggest cerebral mechanisms of attention switch to certain physical events in the unattended auditory input. These events include stimulus onsets and offsets as well as changes in continuous or discrete stimuli. Moreover, ERP studies on auditory selective attention reveal a specific ERP component, the processing negativity, which permits certain conclusions regarding the nature and mechanisms of attentional stimulus selection.
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