An application of phase spectral analysis to amplitude-modulation following response

A phase spectral analysis developed by Fridman (1982) was applied to the detection of amplitude-modulated frequency following response (AMFR) and its clinical usefulness was evaluated. A 1000 Hz sinusoidally amplitude-modulated tone with a modulation frequency of 40 Hz and a modulation depth of 90% was delivered to the right ear of 10 normal-hearing subjects. According to Fridman's technique, an ensemble of sweeps was divided into 10 groups and group averages were obtained. Then phase variances were calculated using fast Fourier transform for the group averages. In order to determine the optimal conditions of analysis for constructing an automatic detection program using phase spectral analysis, frequency spacing, number of sampling points and number of sweeps averaged per group were investigated. The sensitivity of phase spectral analysis for automatic detection of AMFR was also evaluated. The results suggested that the optimal number of sampling points and frequency spacing are 512 points and 4.9 Hz (observation window 204.8 ms), respectively. Concerning the average number of sweeps, the synchrony measure of the frequency component corresponding to the modulation frequency increased as the number of sweeps increased. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that threshold determination by phase spectral analysis is more sensitive than detection of the threshold by visual analysis of waveform configuration.