AUDITORY EVENT-RELATED DYNAMICS OF THE EEG SPECTRUM AND EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO TONES

A new measure of event-related brain dynamics, the event-related spect ral perturbation (ERSP), is introduced to study event-related dynamics of the EEG spectrum induced by, but not phase-locked to, the onset of the auditory stimuli. The ERSP reveals aspects of event-related brain dynamics not contained in the ERP average of the same response epochs . Twenty-eight subjects participated in daily auditory evoked response experiments during a 4 day study of the effects of 24 h free-field ex posure to intermittent trains of 89 dB low frequency tones. During evo ked response testing, the same tones were presented through headphones in random order at 5 sec intervals. No significant changes in behavio ral thresholds occurred during or after free-field exposure. ERSPs ind uced by target pips presented in some inter-tone intervals were larger than, but shared common features with, ERSPs induced by the tones, mo st prominently a ridge of augmented EEG amplitude from 11 to 18 Hz, pe aking 1-1.5 sec after stimulus onset. Following 3-11 h of free-field e xposure. this feature was significantly smaller in tone-induced ERSPs; target-induced ERSPs were not similarly affected. These results. ther efore, document systematic effects of exposure to intermittent tones o n EEG brain dynamics even in the absence of changes in auditory thresh olds.