Meeting Abstract
Auditory brainstem responses (ABR), a type of auditory evoked potential, are commonly used to assess auditory processing in avian species. However, the technique has never been used in Northern saw-whet owls (Aegolius acadicus), which are known for their unique auditory adaptations and sensitive hearing. Thus, we investigated two common stimulus parameters – repetition rate and onset time – to determine how different features of acoustic stimuli influence the size and shape of the saw-whet owl ABR. There were no differences in the size or synchrony of neural responses at the repetition rates we tested. This suggests that stimuli can be presented to saw-whet owls at a relatively rapid rate to maximize the number of observations from each subject. We also found that noisebursts produced significantly larger and more synchronized responses than tonebursts at onset times longer than 1 ms. The similar size of responses elicited by noise bursts and tonebursts with 1 ms onset times indicates that spectral splatter produces an overgeneralized neural response following the presentation of tones with extremely short onset times. This suggests that stimuli with 2-3 ms onset times should be used in future ABR studies to balance the trade-off between neural response synchrony and spectral splatter.
