Visual load does not decrease the auditory steady-state response to 40-Hz amplitude-modulated tones.

ABSTRACT: The auditory pathway consists of multiple recurrent loops of afferent and efferent connections that extend from the cochlea up to the prefrontal cortex. The early-filter theory proposes that these loops allow top-down filtering of early and middle latency auditory responses. Furthermore, the adaptive filtering model suggests that the filtering of irrelevant auditory stimuli should start lower in the pathway during more demanding tasks. If so, the 40-Hz auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) to irrelevant sounds should be affected by top-down crossmodal attention to a visual task, and effects should vary with the load of the visual task. Because few studies have examined this possibility, we conducted two preregistered studies that manipulated visual load (Study 1: N = 43, Study 2: N = 45)

SUBMITTER: Szychowska M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7757234 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature