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Effects of Continuous Noise Maskers on Tone-evoked Potentials in Cat Primary Auditory Cortex
- Source :
- Cerebral Cortex. 2:134-140
- Publication Year :
- 1992
- Publisher :
- Oxford University Press (OUP), 1992.
-
Abstract
- In nine barbiturate-anesthetized cats, cortical evoked potentials for tones presented to the contralateral ear were studied for the effects of continuous wideband noise masking. In five animals, input-output functions for tones were obtained in the presence of continuous noise masking at the same ear. Tone thresholds were raised by the presence of the masker, and they closely tracked the level of the masker, such that increments in masker level brought about tone threshold elevations of the same magnitude. In four animals, we compared the effect on responses to contralateral tones of continuous maskers presented to the same ear as the tone, to the opposite ear, and to both ears simultaneously. The presence of the masker at the ear opposite the tone had a small and variable effect on the response to the stimulus at the ear with the tone, whether or not noise was also present at that ear. Consideration of extant single-neuron evidence provides an interpretation of these findings. Whereas maskers at the ear with the tone are known to reduce signal sensitivity for almost all cortical neurons, the effects of masking at the ear opposite the tone (ipsilateral to the cortex) are likely to be very heterogeneous. It is likely that the perceptual salience of signals that have different binaural configurations to concurrent maskers resides in which neuronal elements are activated, rather than in the total number of cells excited, and it is perhaps for this reason that the evoked potentials show only modest effects of this masking parameter.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
Cognitive Neuroscience
Auditory area
Perceptual Masking
Stimulus (physiology)
Audiology
Auditory cortex
behavioral disciplines and activities
Functional Laterality
Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
otorhinolaryngologic diseases
medicine
Animals
Evoked potential
Mathematics
Auditory Cortex
Auditory masking
Auditory Threshold
Ear
Continuous noise
Acoustic Stimulation
Cats
Evoked Potentials, Auditory
sense organs
Binaural recording
psychological phenomena and processes
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14602199 and 10473211
- Volume :
- 2
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Cerebral Cortex
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....50ec9b54b83e59ff6ddc3b960dd4ef82