The effects of stimulus parameters on auditory evoked potentials of Carassius auratus

Whole-brain responses to sound are easily measured through auditory evoked potentials (AEP), but it is unclear how differences in experimental parameters affect these responses. The effect of varying parameters is especially unclear in fish studies, the majority of which use simple sound types and then extrapolate to natural conditions. The current study investigated AEPs in goldfish (Carassius auratus) using sounds of different durations (5, 10, and 20 ms) and frequencies (200, 500, 600 and 700 Hz) to test stimulus effects on latency and thresholds. We quantified differences in latency and threshold in comparison to a 10-ms test tone, a duration often used in AEP fish studies. Both response latency and threshold were significantly affected by stimulus duration, with latency patterning suggesting that AEP fires coincident with a decrease in stimulus strength. Response latency was also significantly affected by presentation frequency. These results show that stimulus type has important effects on AEP measures of hearing and call for clearer standards across different measures of AEP. Duration effects also suggest that AEP measures represent summed responses of duration-detecting neural circuit, but more effort is needed to understand the neural drivers of this commonly used technique.