Improving the frequency specificity of the auditory brain stem response.

Several investigators have suggested that the use of tonal stimuli shaped with nonlinear windowing functions can improve the frequency specificity of the auditory brain stem response (ABR). This study investigated the effects of different windowing functions on the ABR for 30 normal-hearing adults and 30 adults with high-frequency hearing loss. These hearing-impaired patients often produce an abnormal click-evoked ABR because of the influence of the high-frequency loss. Each subject was evaluated using a click stimulus and a 500 Hz tone burst gated with one linear and four nonlinear windowing functions. There were no significant differences in wave V latency between the groups for any of the five windowed tone burst conditions. These results suggest that any of the windowing functions used would be effective for 500 Hz tonal ABRs with this population of hearing-impaired adults.