Electrophysiological indices of amplitude modulated sounds and sensitivity to noise

Annoyance to unwanted sound differs across individuals, though why noise sensitive individuals are more reactive to noise while others are more resilient remains unanswered. The Information Processing Hypothesis posits that noise sensitive individuals are vulnerable to higher-order auditory processing deficits. The aim of this study was to test the veracity of this hypothesis by documenting differences in pre-attentive auditory evoked potentials (ERP) between high noise sensitive and low noise sensitive individuals. Participants provided annoyance measures for three amplitude-modulated sounds, and were exposed to the sounds while undergoing electroencephalogram recording. Results indicated that annoyance increased with modulation, and that modulation affected both N1 and P2 components. At the group level, highly noise sensitive individuals exhibited significantly greater annoyance to a low-frequency tone, alongside significantly higher P2 amplitude, than individuals reporting low levels of noise sensitivity. Overall, the results partially supported the Information Processing Hypothesis of noise sensitivity, but also suggest that acoustic features may be more important than hitherto argued.