Assessment of P3a and P3b after moderate to severe brain injury

The purpose of the study was to examine the P3a and P3b components of the event-related brain potential (ERP) in patients sustaining moderate to severe brain injury. Electrophysiological and behavioral responses were recorded in brain injured (N = 18) and healthy control (N = 21) participants performance of an auditory 3-stimulus distractor paradigm. Auditory stimuli consisted of a series of repetitive standard tones (75 ms), occasionally interrupted by equiprobable target (25 ms) and distractor sounds (white noise). Tone duration discrimination accuracy was similar in patients and controls, but patients had prolonged reaction times to targets. The reaction time delay was paralleled by a prolongation of P3b latency to targets in the patient group relative to controls. The stimulus and task dependent modulation of ERP responses in the brain injury group was similar to that of controls in terms of the spatial distribution of ERPs over the scalp. However, the brain injury group had attenuated P3a and P3b amplitudes to distractor and target stimuli, respectively. The electrophysiological data suggest a deficit in the allocation of attentional resources to the processing of deviant stimuli in the brain injury group.