Regular interstimulus interval as a critical determinant of short-term “habituation” of the auditory averaged evoked response

Abstract

In order to delineate the critical condition for the short-term “habituation” of the cortical auditory averaged evoked response, two levels of activation were combined with regular vs irregular interstimulus intervals in a 2 by 2 factorial design. Averages were computed across 24 trains of 10 click stimuli each. It was found that a regular interstimulus interval produced a rapid exponential decreasing function within trains for the N1-P2 component regardless of activation level. High activation, however, resulted in smaller P2-N2 components.