Hirschhorn T N, Michie P T
School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Psychophysiology. 1990 Sep;27(5):495-512. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1990.tb01964.x.
Evidence of peripheral filtering of auditory information at the cochlear and brainstem levels was sought using brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) recorded during auditory and visual tasks. It can be argued that the discrimination tasks used in the past to investigate peripheral filtering of sensory information in humans involve two levels of discrimination, the consequences of which result in two independent types of inhibition: crossmodal inhibition as a result of between-modality discrimination, and intramodal inhibition as a result of within-modality discrimination. Therefore, the observed effects on the BAEPs may reflect the extent to which these two types of inhibition are engaged. In this investigation a paradigm that included two non-discrimination (passive) tasks and two discrimination (active) tasks was employed. BAEPs recorded during listening (a passive auditory task) provided a baseline measure, against which comparisons of BAEPs recorded during auditory and visual discrimination could be made for independent evidence of crossmodal and intramodal inhibition. The data in this study did not support the presence of two types of inhibition proposed above, or show evidence of peripheral filtering of auditory information at the cochlear and brainstem levels. However, the sensitivity of BAEPs to efferent system activation at the cochlea and hence their value as a tool in investigations of peripheral filtering in humans was questioned.
研究人员利用在听觉和视觉任务期间记录的脑干听觉诱发电位（BAEP），探寻在耳蜗和脑干水平对听觉信息进行外周过滤的证据。可以说，过去用于研究人类感觉信息外周过滤的辨别任务涉及两个辨别水平，其结果导致两种独立的抑制类型：跨模态辨别导致的跨模态抑制，以及模态内辨别导致的模态内抑制。因此，观察到的对BAEP的影响可能反映了这两种抑制类型的参与程度。在这项研究中，采用了一种包含两个非辨别（被动）任务和两个辨别（主动）任务的范式。在聆听（一种被动听觉任务）期间记录的BAEP提供了一个基线测量值，通过它可以对在听觉和视觉辨别期间记录的BAEP进行比较，以获取跨模态和模态内抑制的独立证据。本研究中的数据不支持上述两种抑制类型的存在，也未显示在耳蜗和脑干水平对听觉信息进行外周过滤的证据。然而，BAEP对耳蜗传出系统激活的敏感性，以及因此其作为人类外周过滤研究工具的价值受到了质疑。
