Frequency-specific contributions to the auditory brain stem response derived by means of pure-tone masking

The pure-tone masking technique has been employed to determine the contributions of neural activity from different cochlear regions to the click-evoked auditory brain stem response (compound ABR). ABR to broad-band clicks were recorded without and with simultaneous presentation of pure tones of frequencies ranging from 8 to 0.5 kHz. Derived ABRs for individual frequency bands were obtained by subtracting the masked responses from the unmasked ones. To determine the contributions to the compound ABR, masked and derived ABRs were compared with unmasked responses. The frequency specificity of the contributions was more distinct at lower rather than at higher stimulus intensities. Independent of stimulus intensity, the 8- to 2-kHz regions turned out to be the main sources of waves I-V in the compound ABR, whereas waves VI and VII seem to be predominantly generated by contributions from regions specific for 1 and 0.5 kHz. The main advantage of the pure-tone masking technique as compared with the tone pip stimulation is that contributions from the low-frequency regions become more clearly detectable. The validity of this technique has been proved by comparing the compound ABR with the sum of the derived ABRs. The comparison of ABRs derived by pure-tone masking with those derived by conventional high-pass noise masking did prove the validity of the technique as well.