Auditory attention and selective input modulation: A topographical ERP study

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in subjects receiving tones (left ear 300 Hz, right ear 6000 Hz) at a rapid rate and trying to detect occasional higher-pitched stimuli in a designated ear. ERPs to attended stimuli showed enhanced negative amplitudes whose topographical distribution differed from that of the exogeneous N1 component. Moreover, the latter was considerably larger for low than high tones, whereas the attention effect had similar amplitudes for the two tones. Consequently, the attention effect, even when perfectly coinciding in time with N1, does not seem to be caused by modulation of the exogeneous N1 but rather by a separate process activated by attention. This suggests that attention does not modulate initial stimulus representations in audition.