A simulation study assessing the efficiency of deriving evoked responses using high stimulus rate

This study investigates the effects of stimulus rate on the recording efficiency of evoked-response scenario using a computer generated data simulating auditory evoked potentials (AEPs). We examine AEPs derived from three paradigms: 1) Conventional stimuli for ensemble averaging; 2) continuous loop averaging deconvolution (CLAD); and 3) maximum length sequence (MLS) stimuli, in which deconvolution techniques are incorporated to retrieve the overlapped responses. The performance is evaluated by correlation coefficients between the ideal and the derived responses. The results show that there is no distinct improvement of SNR for high rate stimulation paradigms, suggesting that the techniques of deconvolution in high rate will not provide more efficient recording approach. Further, responses from the CLAD paradigm tend to deteriorate compared to the other two methods due to the lower jittering arrangement of the sequence.