Different contra-sound effects between noise and music stimuli seen in N1m and psychophysical responses

Auditory-evoked responses can be affected by the sound presented to the contralateral ear. The different contra-sound effects between noise and music stimuli on N1m responses of auditory-evoked fields and those on psychophysical response were examined in 12 and 15 subjects, respectively. In the magnetoencephalographic study, the stimulus to elicit the N1m response was a tone burst of 500 ms duration at a frequency of 250 Hz, presented at a level of 70 dB, and white noise filtered with high-pass filter at 2000 Hz and music stimuli filtered with high-pass filter at 2000 Hz were used as contralateral noise. The contralateral stimuli (noise or music) were presented in 10 dB steps from 80 dB to 30 dB. Subjects were instructed to focus their attention to the left ear and to press the response button each time they heard burst stimuli presented to the left ear. In the psychophysical study, the effects of contralateral sound presentation on the response time for detection of the probe sound of a 250 Hz tone burst presented at a level of 70 dB were examined for the same contra-noise and contra-music used in the magnetoencephalographic study. The amplitude reduction and latency delay of N1m caused by contra-music stimuli were significantly larger than those by contra-noise stimuli in bilateral hemisphere, even for low level of contra-music near the psychophysical threshold. Moreover, this larger suppressive effect induced by contramusic effects was also observed psychophysically; i.e., the change in response time for detection of the probe sound was significantly longer by adding contralateral music stimuli than by adding contra-noise stimuli. Regarding differences in effect between contra-music and contra-noise, differences in the degree of saliency may be responsible for their different abilities to disturb auditory attention to the probe sound, but further investigation is required to confirm this hypothesis.