The effect of click rate on latency and interpeak interval of the brain-stem auditory evoked potentials in children from birth to 6 years.

ABSTRACT

Latency and interpeak interval of the brain-stem auditory evoked potentials at different click rates were measured in 80 healthy children from birth to 6 years, and 21 adults. Clicks were presented at 10, 30, 50, 70 and 90/sec, and 70, 40 and 20 dB HL. At high stimulus intensity (70 dB SL), all latencies of waves I, III and V and the I-V, I-III and III-V intervals showed a progressive prolongation with increasing repetition rate. The latency- and the interval-rate functions were similar for all age groups but their slopes were slightly steeper in younger than in older. As click rate increased from 10/sec to 90/sec, the latencies of waves I, III and V at different age groups were prolonged by 4-10%, 9-13% and 12-15% respectively, and the intervals of I-V, I-III and III-V were prolonged by 15-16%, 8-16% and 14-24% respectively. The mean increments of wave V latency and I-V interval in different age groups were 0.404-0.575 and 0.332-0.526 msec respectively with increasing click rate from 10 to 50/sec, and 0.697-1.009 and 0.629-0.776 msec respectively with increasing click rate from 10 to 90/sec. The younger the age the larger the absolute increments for all these BAEP parameters, but the increasing rates for a BAEP measure were similar among different age groups, exhibiting no age-dependent differences.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)