Are BAEP and MLR suited for the study of a hypothetic peripheral selective attention effect?

BAEPs and MLRs for clicks were recorded for situations of selective attention, ignoring stimuli and mental arithmetic. Certain studies have shown no attention effect on these evoked potentials, but several others have shown reduction of latency and increase in amplitude under selective attention. Our study finds no significant difference in latency or amplitude for BAEP waves I, III and V, nor in Na or Pa latency or NaPa amplitude for MLR. What we know anatomically of cochlear innervation, particularly efferent innervation, would seem to show that efferent projection is basically onto the outer hair cells which have been little if at all explored by BAEPs and MLRs under standard conditions. A study of outer hair cell functioning under various attention situations would be needed in order to find any peripheral selective attention effect.