TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - Does the efferent system aid with selective attention?
JO  - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
A1  - McFadden, Dennis
A1  - Walsh, Kyle P.
A1  - Pasanen, Edward G.
SP  - 2384
EP  - 2384
VL  - 135
IS  - 
N2  - To study whether attention and inattention lead to differential activation of the olivocochlear (OC) efferent system, a cochlear measure of efferent activity was collected while human subjects performed behaviorally under the two conditions. Listeners heard two independent, simultaneous strings of seven digits, one spoken by a male and the other by a female, and at the end of some trials (known in advance), they were required to recognize the middle five digits spoken by the female. Interleaved with the digits were one stimulus that evokes a stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emission (SFOAE) and another that activates the OC system-a 4-kHz tone (60 dB SPL, 300 ms in duration) and a wideband noise (1.0-6.0 kHz, 25 dB spectrum level, 250 ms in duration, beginning 50 ms after tone onset). These interleaved sounds, used with a double-evoked procedure, permitted the collection of a nonlinear measure called the nSFOAE. When selective attention was required behaviorally, the magnitude of the nSFOAE to tone-plus-noise differed by 1.3-4.0 dB compared to inattention. Our interpretation is that the OC efferent system was more active during attention than during relative inattention. Whether or how this efferent activity actually aided behavioral performance under attention is not known.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0001-4966
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4877881
ID  - ref1
ER  -