Neural processing of high-rate auditory stimulation under conditions of various maskers

This study investigated a new auditory evoked-response, G-waves, being the response to tone-pip stimuli delivered at a rate of 40/s. These waves were detected using the Q-sequence deconvolution (QSD) method, which utilizes circular convolution and deconvolution on a quasi-periodic stimulus sequence to recover the transient response to each stimulus in the sequence. Thus, the G-waves recorded to stimuli delivered at 40/s show the transient responses that underlie the "40 Hz steady-state response". Based upon initial data showing differences in masker effects as a function of stimulus repetition rate, we studied several maskers, showing that at the 40/s rate white noise maskers affect the waveforms, whereas music masking at the same intensity does not. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.