International Journal of Neuroscience
ISSN: 0020-7454 (Print) 1543-5245 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ines20
Electrical and Magnetic Neural Activity: White Noise Effects on Pattern-Reversal Visual Evoked Potentials Gastone Rocchetti To cite this article: Gastone Rocchetti (1992) Electrical and Magnetic Neural Activity: White Noise Effects on Pattern-Reversal Visual Evoked Potentials, International Journal of Neuroscience, 64:1-4, 253-257, DOI: 10.3109/00207459209000552 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/00207459209000552
Published online: 07 Jul 2009.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ines20 Download by: [McMaster University]
Date: 04 April 2016, At: 11:40
Intern. J. Neuroscience, 1992, Vol. 64,pp. 253-251 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
0 1992 Gordon and Breach Science Publishers S.A. Printed in the United States of America
WHITE NOISE EFFECTS ON PATTERNREVERSAL VISUAL EVOKED POTENTIALS GASTONE ROCCHETTI Istituto di Psicologia del CNR and Dipartimento di Psicologia, Universita degli Studi “La Sapienza, Roma, Italy ”
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
(Received November 29, 1990 in final form November 18, 1991)
Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were recorded in 9 subjects from occipital and temporal leads. The stimulus was a checkerboard phase-reversed at the frequency of 1 Hz, binocularly viewed by the subject. VEPs were recorded during white noise stimulation (9 different levels of intensity) and without noise stimulation. PlOO latency was not affected by the white noise stimulation, whereas the N75-PI00 amplitude turned out to be affected by the simultaneous auditory stimulation with different patterns in relation to the site of the recording. The results are discussed in terms of general activation aroused by the white noise on visual information processing. Keywords: VEPs, white noise, hemispheric asymmetry, activation.
Research on visual potentials (EPs) by checkerboards or other basic visual information is generally devoted to the effects of physical properties of the visual stimulus without investigating the influence of simultaneous stimulation of a different sensory (e.g., auditory) modality. Some works have investigated the effects of simultaneous visual stimulation on auditory EPs and have shown an interaction between the two sensory stimulations (Oatman & Anderson, 1980; Oatman, 1984). The aim of the present work was to investigate the effects of auditory stimulation on pattern-reversal visual EPs. The white noise, at different levels of intensity, was delivered during the visual stimulation evoking the recorded brain electrical activity. It is well known that the white noise affects both the performance in auditory tasks (also the auditory EPs morphology is affected: Dobie & Wilson, 1985; Rocchetti, Viggiano & Mecacci, 1987; Gott & Hughes, 1989) and the performance in other sensory modality tasks (Broadbent, 1979; Koelega & Brinkman, 1986; Holding & Baker, 1987; Britton & Delay, 1989). The hypothesis was advanced that visual EPs are affected by the simultaneous white noise stimulation, as an evidence of the interaction between auditory and visual modalities.
METHOD Subjects
Subjects were 9 right-handed females (age range: 21-28 years). All the subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Correspondence to: Gastone Rocchetti, Istituto di Psicologia, via Car10 Marx 17, 00157 Roma, Italy.
253
254
G . ROCCHETTI
Stimulus
Visual stimulus consisted of a black and white checkerboard pattern generated on a TV screen. The check size subtended 15 min of arc. The contrast was 87%. Mean luminance was 120 cd/m2. The checkerboard was phase-reversed at the frequency of 1 Hz. Visual EPs were recorded during the simultaneous white noise stimulation (generated by 1342 Random-Noise Generator) delivered through earphones and without this stimulation. Nine levels of intensity were tested: 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 6 5 , 70, 75 db. In the condition without white noise stimulation, the environmental noise was 30 dB.
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
Electrophysiological recording
Visual EPs were recorded from the two hemispheres. Four electrodes were placed at points 2.5 and 5 ern to either side of midline along a line located 2.5 cm above the inion. These leads are referred to as ‘occipital’ and ‘temporal.’ Linked mastoids were the reference. The ground electrode was on the forehead. The sweep time was 408.8 msec. Fifty responses were averaged for each stimulus condition. The four electrical signals were amplified, filtered by bandpass filters (1-30 Hz), averaged by computer (Olivetti M24, software by Lace Elettronica) and plotted by an X-Y plotter. Artifacts were automatically rejected by the computer. Procedure
The subject was seated in front of a television screen, inside an electrically shielded and dimly lit room. The subject was carefully instructed to maintain visual fixation on the fixation mark in the central point in the screen. Each noise level condition and condition without noise were repeated three times. The presentation order of the conditions was random for each subject. Dutu unulysis
The amplitude was measured off-line by the computer between the negative peak with a latency of about 75 ms (N75) and the following positive peak (P100). The latency of PlOO was also measured. Repeated measure ANOVA was conducted on data of amplitude and latency. The factors were four (Electrode: occipital vs temporal; Hemisphere: left vs right; Noise: ten levels enclosing condition without noise and nine levels of conditions with noise; Trial: three levels). Separately for each site of recording (left occipital, right occipital, left temporal, right temporal), trend analysis (Winer, 1971) was made considering the factors Noise and Trial. RESULTS No significant effects were found for the PlOO latency. The N75-Pl00 amplitude was larger at occipital than temporal leads: F (1/8) = 9.24, p < .025). The interaction Electrode X Hemisphere X Noise was significant: F (9/72) = 2 . 6 2 , ~ < .Ol). Trend analysis showed significant effects of the factor Noise: in the left hemisphere the quadratic trend provided the better fit to the points (occipital lead: F (1/8) = 10.93, p < 0.01; temporal lead: F (1/8) = 5.49, p < 0.05); in the right hemisphere
VEP AND WHITE NOISE
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
Left
occipital
255
Right
occipital
- 5
3 0 35 4 0 4 5 5 0 5 5 6 0 6 5 7 0 7 5
Noise (dB)
Left temporal 12
-
11 l2
11
-
lo/
10
-
1 ; h
>
9 -
5"
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
30354045505560657075
Noise (dB)
4.
' ' ' ' ' ' '
51' I ' 3 0 3 5 4 0 4 5 5 0 5 5 6 0 6 5 70 7 5
Noise (dB)
FIGURE 1 The effects of white noise on visual EP amplitude recorded from the occipital and temporal leads of the two cerebral hemispheres.
256
G . ROCCHETTl
the cubic trend provided the better fit to points, but this trend was significant only at the occipital lead: F (1/8) = 6.71, p < 0.05) (Fig. 1).
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
DlSCUSSION The difference in N75-Pl00 amplitude between occipital and temporal leads is wellknown in literature and it is generally explained by the location of cortical generators of this component in the occipital lobes (Regan, 1989). No significant differences were found between the two hemispheres independently on the factor noise. Recent works have shown that functional hemispheric asymmetry for pattern-reversal visual EPs appears to emerge when spatial and temporal parameters of the visual stimulus are systematically manipulated, and special spatio-temporal combinations are used. However in the present study spatial and temporal parameters of stimulation were used which were not adequate to generate patterns of hemispheric asymmetry (Mecacci, Spinelli & Viggiano, 1990; Spinelli & Mecacci, 1990). Other data on hemispheric asymmetry might be gathered using hemifield stimuli and Fz lead as reference electrode. In this condition, a paradoxical lateralization (larger visual EPs amplitude in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the stimulated hemifield) should be found (Barrett, Blumhardt, Halliday, Halliday & Kriss, 1976). White noise turned out to affect the N75-Pl00 amplitude in relation to intensity levels and electrode positions. The result may be interpreted in terms of well-known generalized arousing effects of noise which were diffusely described in the behavioral literature (Broadbent, 1979; Koelega & Brinkman, 1986; Holding & Baker, 1987; Britton & Delay, 1989). Present data show that the effects may be found at early stages of visual information processing, but they appear to have different patterns in the two cerebral hemispheres: in the left hemisphere the amplitude decreased particularly at intermediate levels of intensity; in the right hemisphere the amplitude seemed to be more stable. These two quite different patterns might be related to different activation effects on the two cerebral hemispheres: the left hemisphere would be influenced by interfering stimulation during vigilance and attention tasks in relation to physical stimulus parameters and task demands; the right hemisphere would be engaged in the control of sustained vigilance and attention and would not show decreasing of the processing efficiency (Davies & Parasuraman, 1972).
REFERENCES Barrett, G . , Blumhardt, L., Halliday, A. M . , Halliday, A. M. & Kriss, A . (1976). A paradox in the lateralization of the visual evoked response. Nature (London), 261, 253-255. Britton, L. A. & Delay, E. R. (1989). Effects of noise on a simple visual attentional task. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 68,875-878. Broadbent, D. E. (1979). Human performance and noise. In C . M. Harris (ed.), Handbook of noise conrrol (pp. 17-31). New York: McGraw-Hill. Davies, D . R . & Parasuraman, R. (1982). The psychology of vigilance. London: Academic Press. Dobie, R . A. & Wilson, M. J. (1985). Binaural interaction in auditory brainstem responses: Effects of masking. Elecrroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 62, 56-64. Gott, P. S . & Hughes, E. C. (1989). Effects of noise masking on the brain-stem and middle-latency auditory evoked potentials: Central and peripheral components. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 74, 131-138. Holding, D. H. & Baker, M. A. (1987). Toward meaningful noise research. Journal of General Psychology, 114, 395-410.
VEP AND WHITE NOISE
257
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
Koelega, Y. S . & Brinkman, J.-A. (1986). Noise and vigilance: An evaluative review. Human Factors, 28, 465-48 1. Mecacci, L., Spinelli, D . & Viggiano, M. P. (1990). The effects of visual field size on hemispheric asymmetry of pattern reversal visual evoked potentials. International Journal of Neuroscience, 5 1 , 141-151. Oatman, L. C. (1984). Stability of auditory evoked potentials during simultaneous visual stimulation. Physiological Psychology, 12, 204-208. Oatman, L. C. & Anderson, B. W. (1980). Suppression of the auditory frequency following response during visual attention. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 49, 3 14-322. Regan, D. (1989), Human brain electrophysiology. Evoked potentials and evoked magnetic fields in science and medicine. New York-Amsterdam-London: Elsevier. Rocchetti, G., Viggiano, M. P. & Mecacci, L. (1987). Effetti dell’ascolto di stimoli interferenti sui potenziali evocati troncoencefalici. Archivio di Psicologia Neurologia e Psichiatria, 48, 520-527. Spinelli, D. & Mecacci L. (1990). Handedness and hemispheric asymmetry of pattern reversal visual evoked potentials. Brain and Cognition, 13, 193-210. Winer, B . J. (1971). Statistical principles in experimental design (2nd edition). New York: McGrawHill.
ISSN: 0020-7454 (Print) 1543-5245 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ines20
Electrical and Magnetic Neural Activity: White Noise Effects on Pattern-Reversal Visual Evoked Potentials Gastone Rocchetti To cite this article: Gastone Rocchetti (1992) Electrical and Magnetic Neural Activity: White Noise Effects on Pattern-Reversal Visual Evoked Potentials, International Journal of Neuroscience, 64:1-4, 253-257, DOI: 10.3109/00207459209000552 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/00207459209000552
Published online: 07 Jul 2009.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ines20 Download by: [McMaster University]
Date: 04 April 2016, At: 11:40
Intern. J. Neuroscience, 1992, Vol. 64,pp. 253-251 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only
0 1992 Gordon and Breach Science Publishers S.A. Printed in the United States of America
WHITE NOISE EFFECTS ON PATTERNREVERSAL VISUAL EVOKED POTENTIALS GASTONE ROCCHETTI Istituto di Psicologia del CNR and Dipartimento di Psicologia, Universita degli Studi “La Sapienza, Roma, Italy ”
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
(Received November 29, 1990 in final form November 18, 1991)
Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) were recorded in 9 subjects from occipital and temporal leads. The stimulus was a checkerboard phase-reversed at the frequency of 1 Hz, binocularly viewed by the subject. VEPs were recorded during white noise stimulation (9 different levels of intensity) and without noise stimulation. PlOO latency was not affected by the white noise stimulation, whereas the N75-PI00 amplitude turned out to be affected by the simultaneous auditory stimulation with different patterns in relation to the site of the recording. The results are discussed in terms of general activation aroused by the white noise on visual information processing. Keywords: VEPs, white noise, hemispheric asymmetry, activation.
Research on visual potentials (EPs) by checkerboards or other basic visual information is generally devoted to the effects of physical properties of the visual stimulus without investigating the influence of simultaneous stimulation of a different sensory (e.g., auditory) modality. Some works have investigated the effects of simultaneous visual stimulation on auditory EPs and have shown an interaction between the two sensory stimulations (Oatman & Anderson, 1980; Oatman, 1984). The aim of the present work was to investigate the effects of auditory stimulation on pattern-reversal visual EPs. The white noise, at different levels of intensity, was delivered during the visual stimulation evoking the recorded brain electrical activity. It is well known that the white noise affects both the performance in auditory tasks (also the auditory EPs morphology is affected: Dobie & Wilson, 1985; Rocchetti, Viggiano & Mecacci, 1987; Gott & Hughes, 1989) and the performance in other sensory modality tasks (Broadbent, 1979; Koelega & Brinkman, 1986; Holding & Baker, 1987; Britton & Delay, 1989). The hypothesis was advanced that visual EPs are affected by the simultaneous white noise stimulation, as an evidence of the interaction between auditory and visual modalities.
METHOD Subjects
Subjects were 9 right-handed females (age range: 21-28 years). All the subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Correspondence to: Gastone Rocchetti, Istituto di Psicologia, via Car10 Marx 17, 00157 Roma, Italy.
253
254
G . ROCCHETTI
Stimulus
Visual stimulus consisted of a black and white checkerboard pattern generated on a TV screen. The check size subtended 15 min of arc. The contrast was 87%. Mean luminance was 120 cd/m2. The checkerboard was phase-reversed at the frequency of 1 Hz. Visual EPs were recorded during the simultaneous white noise stimulation (generated by 1342 Random-Noise Generator) delivered through earphones and without this stimulation. Nine levels of intensity were tested: 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 6 5 , 70, 75 db. In the condition without white noise stimulation, the environmental noise was 30 dB.
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
Electrophysiological recording
Visual EPs were recorded from the two hemispheres. Four electrodes were placed at points 2.5 and 5 ern to either side of midline along a line located 2.5 cm above the inion. These leads are referred to as ‘occipital’ and ‘temporal.’ Linked mastoids were the reference. The ground electrode was on the forehead. The sweep time was 408.8 msec. Fifty responses were averaged for each stimulus condition. The four electrical signals were amplified, filtered by bandpass filters (1-30 Hz), averaged by computer (Olivetti M24, software by Lace Elettronica) and plotted by an X-Y plotter. Artifacts were automatically rejected by the computer. Procedure
The subject was seated in front of a television screen, inside an electrically shielded and dimly lit room. The subject was carefully instructed to maintain visual fixation on the fixation mark in the central point in the screen. Each noise level condition and condition without noise were repeated three times. The presentation order of the conditions was random for each subject. Dutu unulysis
The amplitude was measured off-line by the computer between the negative peak with a latency of about 75 ms (N75) and the following positive peak (P100). The latency of PlOO was also measured. Repeated measure ANOVA was conducted on data of amplitude and latency. The factors were four (Electrode: occipital vs temporal; Hemisphere: left vs right; Noise: ten levels enclosing condition without noise and nine levels of conditions with noise; Trial: three levels). Separately for each site of recording (left occipital, right occipital, left temporal, right temporal), trend analysis (Winer, 1971) was made considering the factors Noise and Trial. RESULTS No significant effects were found for the PlOO latency. The N75-Pl00 amplitude was larger at occipital than temporal leads: F (1/8) = 9.24, p < .025). The interaction Electrode X Hemisphere X Noise was significant: F (9/72) = 2 . 6 2 , ~ < .Ol). Trend analysis showed significant effects of the factor Noise: in the left hemisphere the quadratic trend provided the better fit to the points (occipital lead: F (1/8) = 10.93, p < 0.01; temporal lead: F (1/8) = 5.49, p < 0.05); in the right hemisphere
VEP AND WHITE NOISE
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
Left
occipital
255
Right
occipital
- 5
3 0 35 4 0 4 5 5 0 5 5 6 0 6 5 7 0 7 5
Noise (dB)
Left temporal 12
-
11 l2
11
-
lo/
10
-
1 ; h
>
9 -
5"
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
30354045505560657075
Noise (dB)
4.
' ' ' ' ' ' '
51' I ' 3 0 3 5 4 0 4 5 5 0 5 5 6 0 6 5 70 7 5
Noise (dB)
FIGURE 1 The effects of white noise on visual EP amplitude recorded from the occipital and temporal leads of the two cerebral hemispheres.
256
G . ROCCHETTl
the cubic trend provided the better fit to points, but this trend was significant only at the occipital lead: F (1/8) = 6.71, p < 0.05) (Fig. 1).
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
DlSCUSSION The difference in N75-Pl00 amplitude between occipital and temporal leads is wellknown in literature and it is generally explained by the location of cortical generators of this component in the occipital lobes (Regan, 1989). No significant differences were found between the two hemispheres independently on the factor noise. Recent works have shown that functional hemispheric asymmetry for pattern-reversal visual EPs appears to emerge when spatial and temporal parameters of the visual stimulus are systematically manipulated, and special spatio-temporal combinations are used. However in the present study spatial and temporal parameters of stimulation were used which were not adequate to generate patterns of hemispheric asymmetry (Mecacci, Spinelli & Viggiano, 1990; Spinelli & Mecacci, 1990). Other data on hemispheric asymmetry might be gathered using hemifield stimuli and Fz lead as reference electrode. In this condition, a paradoxical lateralization (larger visual EPs amplitude in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the stimulated hemifield) should be found (Barrett, Blumhardt, Halliday, Halliday & Kriss, 1976). White noise turned out to affect the N75-Pl00 amplitude in relation to intensity levels and electrode positions. The result may be interpreted in terms of well-known generalized arousing effects of noise which were diffusely described in the behavioral literature (Broadbent, 1979; Koelega & Brinkman, 1986; Holding & Baker, 1987; Britton & Delay, 1989). Present data show that the effects may be found at early stages of visual information processing, but they appear to have different patterns in the two cerebral hemispheres: in the left hemisphere the amplitude decreased particularly at intermediate levels of intensity; in the right hemisphere the amplitude seemed to be more stable. These two quite different patterns might be related to different activation effects on the two cerebral hemispheres: the left hemisphere would be influenced by interfering stimulation during vigilance and attention tasks in relation to physical stimulus parameters and task demands; the right hemisphere would be engaged in the control of sustained vigilance and attention and would not show decreasing of the processing efficiency (Davies & Parasuraman, 1972).
REFERENCES Barrett, G . , Blumhardt, L., Halliday, A. M . , Halliday, A. M. & Kriss, A . (1976). A paradox in the lateralization of the visual evoked response. Nature (London), 261, 253-255. Britton, L. A. & Delay, E. R. (1989). Effects of noise on a simple visual attentional task. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 68,875-878. Broadbent, D. E. (1979). Human performance and noise. In C . M. Harris (ed.), Handbook of noise conrrol (pp. 17-31). New York: McGraw-Hill. Davies, D . R . & Parasuraman, R. (1982). The psychology of vigilance. London: Academic Press. Dobie, R . A. & Wilson, M. J. (1985). Binaural interaction in auditory brainstem responses: Effects of masking. Elecrroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 62, 56-64. Gott, P. S . & Hughes, E. C. (1989). Effects of noise masking on the brain-stem and middle-latency auditory evoked potentials: Central and peripheral components. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 74, 131-138. Holding, D. H. & Baker, M. A. (1987). Toward meaningful noise research. Journal of General Psychology, 114, 395-410.
VEP AND WHITE NOISE
257
Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 11:40 04 April 2016
Koelega, Y. S . & Brinkman, J.-A. (1986). Noise and vigilance: An evaluative review. Human Factors, 28, 465-48 1. Mecacci, L., Spinelli, D . & Viggiano, M. P. (1990). The effects of visual field size on hemispheric asymmetry of pattern reversal visual evoked potentials. International Journal of Neuroscience, 5 1 , 141-151. Oatman, L. C. (1984). Stability of auditory evoked potentials during simultaneous visual stimulation. Physiological Psychology, 12, 204-208. Oatman, L. C. & Anderson, B. W. (1980). Suppression of the auditory frequency following response during visual attention. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 49, 3 14-322. Regan, D. (1989), Human brain electrophysiology. Evoked potentials and evoked magnetic fields in science and medicine. New York-Amsterdam-London: Elsevier. Rocchetti, G., Viggiano, M. P. & Mecacci, L. (1987). Effetti dell’ascolto di stimoli interferenti sui potenziali evocati troncoencefalici. Archivio di Psicologia Neurologia e Psichiatria, 48, 520-527. Spinelli, D. & Mecacci L. (1990). Handedness and hemispheric asymmetry of pattern reversal visual evoked potentials. Brain and Cognition, 13, 193-210. Winer, B . J. (1971). Statistical principles in experimental design (2nd edition). New York: McGrawHill.
