Target detection in healthy 4-week old piglets from a passive two-tone auditory oddball paradigm

R Anna Oeur,Susan S Margulies

doi:10.1186/s12868-020-00601-4

R Anna Oeur, Susan S Margulies

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12868-020-00601-4

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Abstract

BackgroundPassive auditory oddball tests are effort independent assessments that evaluate auditory processing and are suitable for paediatric patient groups. Our goal was to develop a two-tone auditory oddball test protocol and use this clinical assessment in an immature large animal model. Event-related potentials captured middle latency P1, N1, and P2 responses in 4-week old (N = 16, female) piglets using a custom piglet 32- electrode array on 3 non-consecutive days. The effect of target tone frequency (250 Hz and 4000 Hz) on middle latency responses were tested in a subset of animals.ResultsResults show that infrequent target tone pulses elicit greater N1 amplitudes than frequent standard tone pulses. There was no effect of day. Electrodes covering the front of the head tend to elicit greater waveform responses. P2 amplitudes increased for higher frequency target tones (4000 Hz) than the regular 1000 Hz target tones (p < 0.05).ConclusionsTwo-tone auditory oddball tests produced consistent responses day-to-day. This clinical assessment was successful in the immature large animal model.

Highlights

Passive auditory oddball tests are effort independent assessments that evaluate auditory processing and are suitable for paediatric patient groups
Two-tone auditory oddball tests were successfully assessed in an immature large animal model
Consistent N1, peak at ms (P2) amplitudes were observed across three non-consecutive test days

Summary

Introduction

Passive auditory oddball tests are effort independent assessments that evaluate auditory processing and are suitable for paediatric patient groups. Auditory oddball paradigms and ERPs are common tests used to elicit auditory processing at the cortical level [12, 13], and have been used as a marker of altered cognition in various diseased populations including concussion [14], schizophrenia [15] and autism [16]. These tests are effort independent tests that present infrequent ‘target’ tone pulses amongst a series of more frequent ‘standard’ tone pulses. A second positive peak at 200 ms (P2) is considered to be involved in early attention [12, 13]

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