Compound impulse response for the brain stem derived through combinations of cochlear and brain stem recordings

To overcome some of the problems involved in the application of brain stem evoked responses (BSER) in otoneurological diagnosis an approach is developed which combines cochlear and brain stem recordings. The activity of the cochlea and brain stem generators, as seen from the far-field recording electrode, is considered to be the output from a single system. The impulse response of this system can be derived through deconvolution of the brain stem evoked responses, BSER, with the compound action potential, AP, followed by appropriate filtering. This method is used on the recordings from 15 subjects with various degrees of cochlear hearing loss. The results show that the compound impulse response, CIR, for the brain stem consists of five recognizable peaks. From the individual subjects this response pattern is largely independent of intensity. By plotting the amplitude and latency of the individual peaks for all 15 subjects a set of normative data is retrieved. The variation in the data is small, probably because interfeerence from the periphery is eliminated and the separation of activity from the different brain stem generators is improved.