Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the auditory sustained potential elicited by a sustained toneburst is a sensory response or a endogenous potential associated with attention to the auditory stimulus. We designed two paradigms each of which consisted of three experiments. In both paradigms, only the third experiment required the subjects to pay their attention to duration of the auditory stimulus. As a result, in both paradigms, the first and second experiments failed in eliciting the auditory sustained potentials, on the other hand, only the third experiment succeeded in eliciting the auditory sustained potentials. Based on these results, we suggested that the auditory sustained potential is a endogenous potential associated with sustained attention to the auditory stimulus, rather than a sensory response.
