Simultaneous acquisition of high-rate early, middle, and late auditory evoked potentials.

Abstract

Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) are typically acquired at rates that facilitate their study as segregated by epochs relative to stimulus onset: early (ABR, 1.5-15 ms), middle (MLR, 15-60 ms), and late (LAEP, ≥60 ms) potentials. In particular, late AEPs are often acquired with stimulus repetition rates between 0.1 Hz and 1 Hz, and are bandpass filtered to contain information only within 1-30 Hz. These low repetition rates, filtering and low SNRs eliminate much of the potential contributions of the early and middle-latency responses in AEP recordings. This study aims to demonstrate a method for acquiring whole-AEP responses at higher stimulus repetition rates of 0.5 Hz to 10 Hz, by utilizing the Continuous Loop Averaging Deconvolution (CLAD) method, increasing the bandwidth of the recordings to 1-300 Hz to include early components, and using short-duration chirps to increase synchronous firing of the cochlear and auditory pathway neurons. Such a method may facilitate diagnostic or functional assessment of single AEP recordings for detection, identification, or evaluation of early, middle and late components of auditory responses.