Effect of attention on evoked responses in the classical auditory pathway.

Abstract

Hernandez-Peon, Scherrer and Jouvet1 have reported marked decrements in the amplitude of click-evoked responses in the cochlear nucleus in cats attending to stimuli of other sensory modalities. It was argued that this reduction was brought about by efferent inhibition from the brain-stem reticular formation. In a later investigation, Jane, Smirnov and Jasper2 were unable to demonstrate any reduction in evoked potential amplitudes in the medial genicu-late body and the auditory cortex during ‘attention’. In view of these conflicting results, it was decided to examine the effect of the act of ‘attention’ on evoked potentials recorded simultaneously from three levels in the primary auditory pathway of unanaesthetized cats.