Effect of stimulus repetition on negative sustained potentials elicited by auditory and visual stimuli in the human EEG

Effect of repetition of auditory and visual stimuli on sensory-evoked sustained potentials was studied. The stimuli were tones and flashes of 1 sec duration presented in trains of six stimuli with an inter-stimulus-interval of 1 sec. The repetition rate of the trains was 1 train/min. The EEG was recorded from electrodes located at Cz, Pz and Oz. Both auditory and visual stimuli elicited negative sustained potentials which during the first stimuli of the trains were maximal in amplitude and shortest in latency at Cz. Repetition of the stimulus resulted in almost complete disappearance of the sustained potentials; for auditory stimulation a small negative shift was recorded only at Cz, whereas for visual stimulation a small sustained potential was seen only at Pz and Oz. The results indicate that the slow potentials evoked by short tones or lights are composed of at least two components. One of these components may reflect neural processing associated with orienting reflex. The other component seems to be related to specific neural processing of the stimulus.