Frequency specificity of chirp-evoked auditory brainstem responses

This study examines the usefulness of the upward chirp stimulus developed by Dau et al. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 1530-1540 (2000)] for retrieving frequency-specific information. The chirp was designed to produce simultaneous displacement maxima along the cochlear partition by compensating for frequency-dependent traveling-time differences. In the first experiment, auditory brainstem responses (ABR) elicited by the click and the broadband chirp were obtained in the presence of high-pass masking noise, with cutoff frequencies of 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 kHz. Results revealed a larger wave-V amplitude for chirp than for click stimulation in all masking conditions. Wave-V amplitude for the chirp increased continuously with increasing high-pass cutoff frequency while it remains nearly constant for the click for cutoff frequencies greater than 1 kHz. The same two stimuli were tested in the presence of a notched-noise masker with one-octave wide spectral notches corresponding to the cutoff frequencies used in the first experiment. The recordings were compared with derived responses, calculated offline, from the high-pass masking conditions. No significant difference in response amplitude between click and chirp stimulation was found for the notched-noise responses as well as for the derived responses. In the second experiment, responses were obtained using narrow-band stimuli. A low-frequency chirp and a 250-Hz tone pulse with comparable duration and magnitude spectrum were used as stimuli. The narrow-band chirp elicited a larger response amplitude than the tone pulse at low and medium stimulation levels. Overall, the results of the present study further demonstrate the importance of considering peripheral processing for the formation of ABR. The chirp might be of particular interest for assessing low-frequency information.