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Event-related potentials to single-cycle binaural beats and diotic amplitude modulation of a tone

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Abstract

When two tones with slightly different frequencies are dichotically presented, binaural beats (BBs) are experienced. BBs resulting from the cycling change in interaural phase difference elicit electroencephalographic responses. Because they repeat at short periods, allowing poor recovery of the cortical responses, these steady-state responses have small amplitudes, and their various wave components intermingle and might mask each other. Using single-cycle BBs separated by relatively long inter-onset intervals would be a solution, but introducing a transient interaural frequency shift requires response subtraction which may not be acceptable for non-additive brain responses. The proposed stimulation method employs transient and monaurally subthreshold frequency shifts in opposite directions in the two ears to produce single-cycle BBs of a 250 Hz tone. These shifts are perceived as distinct BBs when presented dichotically, but remain subthreshold when presented monotically. Therefore, no frequency-shift response is elicited, and the specific BB response is obtained with no need for waveform subtraction. We recorded from 19 normal hearing participants the event-related potentials (ERPs) to single-cycle BBs and also to temporary diotic amplitude modulation (AM) with matched perceptual salience. The ERPs to single-cycle BBs presented at 2 s inter-onset intervals had N1-P2 responses with up to seven times larger amplitudes than the conventional steady-state BB responses in the literature. Significant differences were found between the scalp potential distributions of the N1 responses to BB and AM stimuli, suggesting that the cortical sites, where envelope-based level processing and temporal fine structure-based spatial processing of the stimulus take place, are not totally overlapped.

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(From Ungan et al. 2014)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biophysics, School of Medicine, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Pekcan Ungan

  2. Department of Biophysics, Faculty of Medicine, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey

    Suha Yagcioglu

  3. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Ece Ayik

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  1. Pekcan Ungan
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  2. Suha Yagcioglu
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  3. Ece Ayik
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Correspondence to Pekcan Ungan.

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This work was funded by Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council, Ankara (Project: 114S492) and supported by Koc University School of Medicine, Istanbul, and also by Science Academy, Istanbul, Turkey.

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Ungan, P., Yagcioglu, S. & Ayik, E. Event-related potentials to single-cycle binaural beats and diotic amplitude modulation of a tone. Exp Brain Res 237, 1931–1945 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05562-7

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