title: History of silence affects auditory evoked fields regardless of intervening sounds: a magnetoencephalographic study.
abstract: The amplitudes of auditory evoked N1 m responses are known to depend on the length of the pre-stimulus silent interval. However, it remains unknown whether pre-penultimate silent intervals affect the auditory evoked responses elicited by test stimuli. In the present study, we investigated the N1 m responses elicited by a train of four successive tones with a silent interval of 1 s subsequent to that with a 0.25-, 0.5-, 2- or 4-s silent interval using magnetoencephalography. The results obtained demonstrated that the N1 m source strength decreased as the pre-penultimate silent interval became shorter. A history of silences had a significant impact on the N1 m source strength. Human brain activity that is modulated by silence history may play an important role in encoding a series of sound streams that include silences, such as speech and music.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Physiology, National Institute for Physiological Sciences, 38 Nishigo-Naka, Myodaiji, Okazaki, 444-8585, Japan; Department of Physiological Sciences, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Hayama, Miura District, Kanagawa 240-0115, Japan.
authors.forename: Hidehiko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Okamoto
authors.forename: Ryusuke
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kakigi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: adaptation; auditory cortex; human; magnetoencephalography