Human auditory attention: a central or peripheral process?

Abstract

The click-evoked electrical responses of the human cochlear nerve were recorded from the external ear canal concurrently with the cortical evoked potentials from the scalp. Paying attention to the clicks during a discrimination task resulted in a highly significant enhancement of the cortical response but no change in the cochlear nerve response. Hence no evidence was obtained for the operation of a peripheral gating mechanism during attention in man.