Comparison of binaural auditory brainstem responses and the binaural difference potential evoked by chirps and clicks

Rising chirps that compensate for the dispersion of the travelling wave on the basilar membrane evoke larger monaural brainstem responses than clicks. In order to test if a similar effect applies for the early processing stages of binaural information, monaurally and binaurally evoked auditory brainstem responses were recorded for clicks and chirps for levels from 10 to 60 dB nHL in steps of 10 dB. Ten thousand sweeps were collected for every stimulus condition from 10 normal hearing subjects. Wave V amplitudes are significantly larger for chirps than for clicks for all conditions. The amplitude of the binaural difference potential, DP1-DN1, is significantly larger for chirps at the levels 30 and 40 dB nHL. Both the binaurally evoked potential and the binaural difference potential exhibit steeper growth functions for chirps than for clicks for levels up to 40 dB nHL. For higher stimulation levels the chirp responses saturate approaching the click evoked amplitude. For both stimuli the latency of DP1 is shorter than the latency of the binaural wave V, which in turn is shorter than the latency of DN1. The amplitude ratio of the binaural difference potential to the binaural response is independent of stimulus level for clicks and chirps. A possible interpretation is that with click stimulation predominantly binaural interaction from high frequency regions is seen which is compatible with a processing by contralateral inhibitory and ipsilateral excitatory (IE) cells. Contributions from low frequencies are negligible since the responses from low frequencies are not synchronized for clicks. The improved synchronization at lower frequencies using chirp stimuli yields contributions from both low and high frequency neurons enlarging the amplitudes of the binaural responses as well as the binaural difference potential. Since the constant amplitude ratio of the binaural difference potential to the binaural response makes contralateral and ipsilateral excitatory interaction improbable, binaural interaction at low frequencies is presumably also of the IE type. Another conclusion of this study is that the chirp stimuli employed here are better suited for auditory brainstem responses and binaural difference potentials than click stimuli since they exhibit higher amplitudes and a better signal-to-noise ratio.