COMPLEXITY-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFERENCE IN SPEECH-EVOKED AUDITORY BRAINSTEM RESPONSES (s-ABRs) BETWEEN BINAURAL AND MONAURAL LISTENING CONDITIONS

Abstract

One of the important research areas in behavioral neuroscience is to investigate the brain response to different types of stimuli. Speech-evoked Auditory Brainstem Response (s-ABR) is a tool to study the brainstem processing of speech sounds. During years, scientists have employed different techniques to analyze the influence of auditory stimulation on s-ABR signal in different conditions. One important category of works, which aroused the attention of scientists, has been the analysis of the variations of s-ABR signal in binaural and monaural stimulations. In this research, we analyze the variations of s-ABR signal due to auditory stimulation in the form of speech syllable, in binaural and monaural (right or left ear) listening conditions. For this purpose, we have employed fractal analysis in order to analyze the complexity of s-ABR signal in three stimulation conditions (both ears, right ear, left ear). The results of our analysis showed that s-ABR signal in case of binaural stimulation shows significant lower complexity compared to monaural stimulation. In comparison of s-ABR signals between left ear and right ear using fractal dimension, no significant difference was observed.