Auditory evoked potentials and their utility in the assessment of complex sound processing

Human auditory cortex is, in the classical sense, composed of multiple fields distributed both on the exposed surface of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and on the areas buried within the Sylvian fissure on the supratemporal plane (STP). In addition, cortex of the parietal and frontal lobes, while not generally considered part of the classical auditory forebrain, also participates in higher-order operations involving acoustic input (Romanski et al. 1999; Cohen et al. 2004; Gifford and Cohen 2005). Understanding the functions of these various auditory cortical areas requires complementary experimental approaches. This chapter will highlight how event-related potentials (ERPs) and the electroencephalogram (EEG) are important tools in understanding human auditory cortical physiology. All advances in this field cannot be reviewed fully in one chapter. Instead, certain key issues related to the use of these approaches to understanding complex acoustic processing at the cortical level will be discussed, and the relevance of their measures for evolving concepts of auditory cortical function and dysfunction will be highlighted.