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Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions

Previous research has indicated that inner ear function might be modulated by visual attention, although the results have not been totally conclusive. Conceivably, modulation of hearing might occur due to stimulation of the cochlea via descending medial olivocochlear (MOC) neurons. The aim of the pr...

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Autores principales: Jedrzejczak, W. Wiktor, Milner, Rafal, Olszewski, Lukasz, Skarzynski, Henryk
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5742277/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29302404
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4199
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author Jedrzejczak, W. Wiktor
Milner, Rafal
Olszewski, Lukasz
Skarzynski, Henryk
author_facet Jedrzejczak, W. Wiktor
Milner, Rafal
Olszewski, Lukasz
Skarzynski, Henryk
author_sort Jedrzejczak, W. Wiktor
collection PubMed
description Previous research has indicated that inner ear function might be modulated by visual attention, although the results have not been totally conclusive. Conceivably, modulation of hearing might occur due to stimulation of the cochlea via descending medial olivocochlear (MOC) neurons. The aim of the present study was to test whether increased visual attention caused corresponding changes in inner ear function, which was measured by the strength of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) recorded from the ear canal in response to a steady train of clicks. To manipulate attention, we asked subjects to attend to, or ignore, visual stimuli delivered according to an odd-ball paradigm. The subjects were presented with two types of visual stimuli: standard and deviant (20% of all stimuli, randomly presented). During a passive part of the experiment, subjects had to just observe a pattern of squares on a computer screen. In an active condition, the subject’s task was to silently count the occasional inverted (deviant) pattern on the screen. At all times, visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were used to objectively gauge the subject’s state of attention, and OAEs in response to clicks (transiently evoked OAEs, TEOAEs) were used to gauge inner ear function. As a test of descending neural activity, TEOAE levels were evaluated with and without contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS) by broadband noise, a paradigm known to activate the MOC pathway. Our results showed that the recorded VEPs were, as expected, a good measure of visual attention, but even when attention levels changed there was no corresponding change in TEOAE levels. We conclude that visual attention does not significantly affect inner ear function.
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spelling pubmed-57422772018-01-04 Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions Jedrzejczak, W. Wiktor Milner, Rafal Olszewski, Lukasz Skarzynski, Henryk PeerJ Bioengineering Previous research has indicated that inner ear function might be modulated by visual attention, although the results have not been totally conclusive. Conceivably, modulation of hearing might occur due to stimulation of the cochlea via descending medial olivocochlear (MOC) neurons. The aim of the present study was to test whether increased visual attention caused corresponding changes in inner ear function, which was measured by the strength of otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) recorded from the ear canal in response to a steady train of clicks. To manipulate attention, we asked subjects to attend to, or ignore, visual stimuli delivered according to an odd-ball paradigm. The subjects were presented with two types of visual stimuli: standard and deviant (20% of all stimuli, randomly presented). During a passive part of the experiment, subjects had to just observe a pattern of squares on a computer screen. In an active condition, the subject’s task was to silently count the occasional inverted (deviant) pattern on the screen. At all times, visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were used to objectively gauge the subject’s state of attention, and OAEs in response to clicks (transiently evoked OAEs, TEOAEs) were used to gauge inner ear function. As a test of descending neural activity, TEOAE levels were evaluated with and without contralateral acoustic stimulation (CAS) by broadband noise, a paradigm known to activate the MOC pathway. Our results showed that the recorded VEPs were, as expected, a good measure of visual attention, but even when attention levels changed there was no corresponding change in TEOAE levels. We conclude that visual attention does not significantly affect inner ear function. PeerJ Inc. 2017-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC5742277/ /pubmed/29302404 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4199 Text en ©2017 Jedrzejczak et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Bioengineering
Jedrzejczak, W. Wiktor
Milner, Rafal
Olszewski, Lukasz
Skarzynski, Henryk
Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
title Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
title_full Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
title_fullStr Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
title_full_unstemmed Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
title_short Heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
title_sort heightened visual attention does not affect inner ear function as measured by otoacoustic emissions
topic Bioengineering
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5742277/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29302404
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4199
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