Enhanced Place Specificity of the Parallel Auditory Brainstem Response: An Electrophysiological Study.

Purpose: This study investigates the effect of parallel stimulus presentation on the place specificity of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in human listeners. Frequency-specific stimuli do not guarantee a response from the place on the cochlea corresponding only to that characteristic frequency - especially for brief and high-level stimuli. Adding masking noise yields responses that are more place specific, and our prior modeling study has suggested similar effects when multiple frequency-specific stimuli are presented in parallel.

Enhanced Place Specificity of the Parallel Auditory Brainstem Response: An Electrophysiological Study.

Purpose: This study investigates the effect of parallel stimulus presentation on the place specificity of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in human listeners. Frequency-specific stimuli do not guarantee a response from the place on the cochlea corresponding only to that characteristic frequency - especially for brief and high-level stimuli. Adding masking noise yields responses that are more place specific, and a prior modeling study has suggested similar effects when multiple frequency-specific stimuli are presented in parallel.

Enhanced Place Specificity of the Parallel Auditory Brainstem Response: A Modeling Study.

While each place on the cochlea is most sensitive to a specific frequency, it will generally respond to a sufficiently high-level stimulus over a wide range of frequencies. This spread of excitation can introduce errors in clinical threshold estimation during a diagnostic auditory brainstem response (ABR) exam. Off-frequency cochlear excitation can be mitigated through the addition of masking noise to the test stimuli, but introducing a masker increases the already long test times of the typical ABR exam.