Assessment of Vestigial Auriculomotor Activity to Acoustic Stimuli Using Electrodes In and Around the Ear

作者：Andreas Schroeer, Martin Rune Andersen, Mike Lind Rank, Ronny Hannemann, Eline Borch Petersen, Filip Marchman Rønne, Daniel J. Strauß, Farah I. Corona–Strauss · 发表于：Trends in Hearing · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1177/23312165231200158 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces、Gaze Tracking and Assistive Technology、Vestibular and auditory disorders

Recently, it has been demonstrated that electromyographic (EMG) activity of auricular muscles in humans, especially the postauricular muscle (PAM), depends on the spatial location of auditory stimuli. This observation has only been shown using wet electrodes placed directly on auricular muscles. To move towards a more applied, out-of-the-laboratory setting, this study aims to investigate if similar results can be obtained using electrodes placed in custom-fitted earpieces. Furthermore, with the exception of the ground electrode, only dry-contact electrodes were used to record EMG signals, which require little to no skin preparation and can therefore be applied extremely fast. In two experiments, auditory stimuli were presented to ten participants from different spatial directions. In experiment 1, stimuli were rapid onset naturalistic stimuli presented in silence, and in experiment 2, the corresponding participant’s first name, presented in a “cocktail party” environment. In both experiments, ipsilateral responses were significantly larger than contralateral responses. Furthermore, machine learning models objectively decoded the direction of stimuli significantly above chance level on a single trial basis (PAM: [Formula: see text] 80%, in-ear: [Formula: see text] 69%). There were no significant differences when participants repeated the experiments after several weeks. This study provides evidence that auricular muscle responses can be recorded reliably using an almost entire...