Event-related potentials to visual, auditory, and bimodal (combined auditory-visual) stimuli

PubMed ID: 17365112The purpose of this study was to investigate the response properties of event related potentials to unimodal and bimodal stimulations. The amplitudes of N1 and P2 were larger during bimodal evoked potentials (BEPs) than auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in the anterior sites and the amplitudes of P1 were larger during BEPs than VEPs especially at the parieto-occipital locations. Responses to bimodal stimulation had longer latencies than responses to unimodal stimulation. The N1 and P2 components were larger in amplitude and longer in latency during the bimodal paradigm and predominantly occurred at the anterior sites. Therefore, the current bimodal paradigm can be used to investigate the involvement and location of specific neural generators that contribute to higher processing of sensory information. Moreover, this paradigm may be a useful tool to investigate the level of sensory dysfunctions in clinical samples. Copyright © 2007 Informa Healthcare.1739/21122001 Fundamental Research Fund of Shandong UniversityReceived 17 November 2005. This work was supported by the Research Fund of the University of ?stanbul, project number: 1739/21122001. The authors thank Prof. Dr. ?hsan Kara and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Asiye Nurten for help and for permission to use the data recording and processing system in the Institute for Experimental Medicine (DTAE) Department of Neuroscience, ?stanbul University. Adress correspondence to Prof. Dr. Ümmühan Isoglu-Alkac, MD, ?stanbul University, ?stanbul Medical Faculty, Department of Physiology, 34390-Capa, ?stanbul, Turkey. E-mail: [email protected]