[The progress in the study on auditory evoked potentials].

Auditory evoked potential (AEP) is the electric activities originating from auditory systems evoked by sound stimulus. AEP include cortical electric response audiometry (CERA), auditory brainstem evoked response (ABR), 40 Hz auditory event related potentials (40 Hz AERP), auditory steady-state response (ASSR), etc. For the subjects who cannot provide reliable or accurate behavioral hearing threshold, those techniques have been explored to evaluate the behavioral hearing threshold objectively. These techniques are reviewed in this article and are found that they could reflect the behavioral hearing threshold very well. CERA is difficult to operate because it is affected by the subject's wakefulness. ABR is the most widely used method currently and is not affected by the subject's consciousness, but it only reflects high frequencies. 40 Hz AERP has good sensitivity, while its results highly depend on the subject's consciousness. ASSR can be operated by using multiple frequency stimuli simultaneously to both ears and the test time is short. It is still a very difficult task to combine different techniques according to their characteristics in forensic audiology.