Temporal pattern effects on auditory evoked potentials

The question whether stimuli forming temporal patterns are processed differently from identical stimuli belonging to irregular temporal aggregates was investigated. Tones forming either regular or irregular triads were presented to eight normal subjects. The N1-P2 amplitude of evoked potentials to tones forming temporal patterns were consistently lower than those to tones in the irregular aggregates. These data indicate that the perceptual phenomenon of subordination of constituent parts to a well-formed whole is demonstrable in electrophysiological terms.