Lecture 7 Flashcards
What is a steady state response?
- A response that has a steady amplitude and phase relationship to the stimulus
- The stimulus response is on the whole time (unlike ABR, which is a transient response)
- Looking at an ongoing response to a stimulus (an amplitude modulated sound)
Sometimes, all steady state responses are referred to as ____
Frequency following responses
What are 5 examples of steady state responses?
- the cochlear microphonic
- frequency-following responses
- envelope-following responses
- steady-state evoked potentials
- the auditory steady-state response
Explain speech evoked responses
- Speech also has fluctuations
- Can hear the same activity going on in the brain that is in the original sound
- SSRs are encoding the fluctuations that are happening in the actual sound (our brains follow the frequencies of the signal)
What is the maximum firing rate of a neuron?
- The response gives out at 1500-2000Hz (mostly a low frequency response)
- Neurons can only fire a maximum time/second
How do we look at a bunch of neurons?
The volley principle
Who started the work with steady state far field potentials?
- David Regan was the first to do detailed steady-state work with scalp (far-field) potentials in the visual system
- Director of the center for research in vision and hearing
What type of response is an ABR? Explain.
- Transient: happens once after a stimulus (looking at what happens after the transient response is played)
- Transient responses are triggered by an event (ABR by envelope of click or tone burst)
- Once transient responses are started, they do their own thing (ABR is path up the brainstem)
What is a transient response looking at?
- Looking at what happens after the transient response is played
- Looking at travel time
- Get an ABR triggered at a certain point
What do steady state responses follow?
- Steady-state responses follow the stimulus (i.e., they have a constant amplitude and phase relationship to the stimulus)
- You are getting a response that looks like the stimulus (the tone is steady and the response fluctuates with the stimulus)
- Ongoing response to an ongoing stimulus
What is more difficult to determine with a steady state response?
- More difficult to determine the timing (hard to determine where it began because there is always some delay between stimulus and response)
- Whereas with ABR, timing is very important
Explain the path of a sound wave
- In the air, we have longitudinal waves of compression (air particles pushed together) and rarefaction
- As speaker diaphragm pulls back, low pressure wave approaches the ear drum, eventually pulls it out (rarefaction)
- The auditory system is physically moving in motion with the sound
Explain the temporal coding of sound
Light green: basilar membrane pulled upwards (rarefaction)
- Tip links are stretched,
- Ion channels open
Dark green: basilar membrane pushed downwards (condensation)
- Tip links are loose
- Ion channels closed
Firing rate synchronizes with ____
Hair cell movement
What is the receptor potential?
- Receptor potential: measure the potential in the IHC (receptor potential fluctuates as the cilia move back and forth)
- Not a sinusoidal fluctuations and is somewhat displaced on the axis (as the tip links open you have a larger change in receptor potential than when they shut)
Receptor potentials follow the ____
Stimulus
How fast do the hair cells go?
- Where do you see DC potential?
- What is the DC shift?
- What is the AC shift?
- Where does the RP get smaller?
- Start to see a DC potential at higher stimulus (less of what is going on is following the stimulus as you increase in frequency)
- The DC shift is the sustained portion
- The AC portion is the steady state portion (the portion fluctuating with the stimulus)
- Receptor potentials get smaller at high frequencies but is still there
What is phase locking?
Tendency for the AN to fire at a certain phase
Explain AN rate coding and phase-locking at low frequencies
- At LFs, the AN may fire at phases of the signal (the same timing)
- The nerve has the tendency to fire at certain times (phase locking)
- There is rate and phase locking happening
Explain AN rate coding and phase-locking at high frequencies
- Phase locking breaks down at high frequencies (neurons can’t fire that fast, and there is some jitter with each firing)
- Very hard to track high frequency signals
- Only rate coding happening (no phase locking)
Inner Hair Cells connect to ____ Type I SG Fibres
5-20
What is the volley principle?
- The central auditory system ‘listens’ to many neurons, so individual neurons do not need to fire on every cycle
- All the neurons can’t fire every time, but enough of them will (will get a good representation of the AN)
What happens as the IHCs move back and forth? When are individual neurons more likely to fire?
- As this hair cell moves back and forth, we will get a receptor potential that fluctuates (not a pretty sinusoid, more depolarization than hyperpolarization)
- Individual neurons are more likely to fire when ion channels open
What are period histograms?
- AN firing follows waveforms very precisely
- Depolarization = the AN fires
- Hyperpolarization = the AN isn’t firing
What is half wave rectification?
- Half wave rectification = the AN doesn’t fire during hyperpolarization
- This distorts the signal
Phase-locking in the AN vs CN
- Phase-locking is more precise in the cochlear nucleus (e.g., bushy cells) than in the auditory nerve
- A much cleaner representation of the frequency (more precise in the brainstem)
- Why? Each AN fiber isn’t that precise, but when they work together, they are very precise
What is a frequency following response? Where does this response get better?
- A response that follows the frequency
- The response gets better as you go farther up the brainstem
- A far-field (scalp) electrophysiologic response that has the same frequency components as the stimulus
Where is a FFR coming from?
Research suggests sources in the midbrain (IC), but there are likely contributions from the cortex (for very low frequencies), and of course, from the lower brainstem and auditory nerve
Can FFR be used to test hearing directly?
- Unfortunately can’t be recorded near threshold (and high-levels are less place-specific)
- You need fairly high levels and low frequency to get a good FFR (70 dB)
- At softer levels, you will not get a good FFR
What is the highest synchronization of the cochlea?
3kHz
What is the highest synchronization of the brainstem?
1.5kHz
What is the highest synchronization of the cortex?
0.3kHz (but typically up to 40Hz)
What do we do about artifact and the CM with FFR?
- Because the response looks just like the stimulus, it is hard to separate from artifact (because artifact looks just like the stimulus too)
- We usually combat these by recording to alternate polarities, and averaging an even number of trials
What does alternating polarity do to the FFR?
- Stimulus is not perfectly rectified in IHC transduction (since AN is hyperpolarized during condensation phase)
- Alternating polarity should almost eliminate FFR, and double the frequency of residual activity
- It’s going to fire in one half of the cycle, but not the other half (you get a smaller version of the signal at twice the frequency of the stimulus)
How useful are FFRs?
FFRs to the components in the stimulus spectrum have limited utility for audiology (discovered before ABR, but less useful; less useful clinically)
What are 4 cons to FFR?
- Only reflect encoding of low frequency information
- Easily confused with stimulus artefact and the cochlear microphonic
- Alternating polarity eliminates artefact and CM, but also distorts the FFR
- Can only get super well at high levels
What is a brilliant alternative to the FFR?
- The auditory steady state response (ASSR)
- This is a clinically useful alternative to the FFR (a clever way of getting the response that doesn’t have all the issues of the FFR)
How were SSRs discovered?
- Galambos (1981) discovered that presenting stimuli at 40 Hz produced a large steady-state response (not 40 Hz tones, but higher frequency tones presented 40 times per second)
- Presented a high frequency sound (2K) at 40 times per second (found that the response had a 40Hz shape)
What are SSRs similar too?
Steady state responses may be similar to transient responses… it may be a series of them, just overlapped.
Cortical columns synchronize very well at ____Hz
40
Why was the birth or SSRs important?
- You could elicit the transient response (ABR/MLR) with a tone burst at any frequency (e.g. 4 kHz) – wouldn’t get an FFR at 4K, too high
- Therefore, you could elicit a 40 Hz response with repeated tone bursts at any stimulus frequency
- FFR frequency limit is not an issue
A x kHz tone burst, presented 40 times per second creates…
- Displacement primarily at the x kHz cf. of the cochlea
- The STIMULUS frequency (carrier)
- Which is reflected in a 40 Hz response
- The PRESENTATION RATE
- A 2000Hz tone burst will go to the 2000Hz characteristic frequency of the cochlea (carrier frequency)
- What we are looking for from the brain is the presentation rate (40Hz) – you will also see it at the harmonics of that
FFR vs ASSR
FFR
- Follow the frequency of the stimulus (a continuous 500 Hz tone = a small 500 Hz response)
SSR
- Follow the presentation rate or the “envelope” (the turning on/off or up/down of a stimulus)
- Not following the frequency, but the presentation rate (how many times you present)
500Hz played 40 times per second gives you…
- 500Hz FFR
- 40Hz ASSR
What is another name for a SSR?
Envelope following response (EFR)