Research Article

Effect of Subliminal Auditory Stimulation on Components of Auditory Late Responses and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data in Adults with Normal Hearing

Abstract

Background and Aim: The use of subliminal stimulation for unconscious effects on the target population is of great importance. while several studies have generated proper visual and auditory stimuli for subliminal stimulation, no study was found on the long-term effects of it. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the long-term effects of auditory subliminal presentation on the central nervous system structures using fMRI and Auditory Late Responses (ALRs).
Methods: Participants were 26 students with a mean age of 24.03±2.32 years. There was four group in study. First, fMRI was done and ALRs were recorded for all of them. Then, music files containing words embedded in them was presented subliminally to participants in groups A and B for 10 days, group C received music file without any subliminal stimuli and group D was control group. It was repeated after 10 days.
Results: The subliminal stimuli had significant effects on the amplitudes of P1, N1, P2, and P3 waves (F3=25.03, 25.41, 39.11, and 14.60; p<0.001). Between-group comparison showed significant changes in groups A and B compared to groups C and D (p<0.05). The difference in the recorded potential mean values showed the highest change for recording electrodes in the prefrontal, frontal, and central regions and the lowest change in parietal and occipital regions. There was no significant change for a latency component.
Conclusion: Subliminal stimuli, presented appropriately and continuously, can leave longterm effects on the central nervous system structure causing extensive changes in the people’sattitude to a certain subject.

[1] Kouider S, Dehaene S. Levels of processing during nonconscious perception: a critical review of visual masking. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2007;362(1481):857-75. [DOI:10.1098/rstb.2007.2093]
[2] Călin MF. The influence of subliminal messages on decisionmaking capacity. Dialogo. 2017;4(2):51-6. [DOI:10.18638/dialogo.2018.4.2.5]
[3] Smith PK, McCulloch KC. Subliminal perception. In: Ramachandran VS, editor. Encyclopedia of Human Behavior. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier; 2012. p. 551-7. [DOI:10.1016/B978-0-12-375000-6.00350-5]
[4] Dehaene S, Naccache L, Cohen L, Bihan DL, Mangin JF, Poline JB, et al. Cerebral mechanisms of word masking and unconscious repetition priming. Nat Neurosci. 2001;4(7):752-8. [DOI:10.1038/89551]
[5] Dehaene S, Naccache L, Le Clec’H G, Koechlin E, Mueller M, Dehaene-Lambertz G, et al. Imaging unconscious semantic priming. Nature. 1998;395(6702):597-600. [DOI:10.1038/26967]
[6] Rees G, Kreiman G, Koch C. Neural correlates of consciousness in humans. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2002;3(4):261-70. [DOI:10.1038/nrn783]
[7] Giraud AL, Kell C, Thierfelder C, Sterzer P, Russ MO, Preibisch C, et al. Contributions of sensory input, auditory search and verbal comprehension to cortical activity during speech processing. Cereb Cortex. 2004;14(3):247-55. [DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhg124]
[8] Kouider S, Dupoux E. Subliminal speech priming. Psychol Sci. 2005;16(8):617-25. [DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01584.x]
[9] Kouider S, de Gardelle V, Dehaene S, Dupoux E, Pallier C. Cerebral bases of subliminal speech priming. Neuroimage. 2010;49(1):922-9. [DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.08.043]
[10] Tremblay K, Kraus N, McGee T, Ponton C, Otis B. Central auditory plasticity: changes in the N1-P2 complex after speech-sound training. Ear Hear. 2001;22(2):79-90. [DOI:10.1097/00003446-200104000-00001]
[11] Tremblay KL, Kraus N. Auditory training induces asymmetrical changes in cortical neural activity. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2002;45(3):564-72. [DOI:10.1044/1092-4388(2002/045)]
[12] Tiitinen H, Sivonen P, Alku P, Virtanen J, Näätänen R. Electromagnetic recordings reveal latency differences in speech and tone processing in humans. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 1999;8(3):355-63. [DOI:10.1016/S0926-6410(99)00028-2]
[13] Ceponiene R, Shestakova A, Balan P, Alku P, Yiaguchi K, Näätänen R. Children’s auditory event-related potentials index sound complexity and “speechness”. Int J Neurosci. 2001;109(3-4):245-60. [DOI:10.3109/00207450108986536]
[14] Cunningham J, Nicol T, Zecker SG, Bradlow A, Kraus N. Neurobiologic responses to speech in noise in children with learning problems: deficits and strategies for improvement. Clin Neurophysiol. 2001;112(5):758-67. [DOI:10.1016/S1388-2457(01)00465-5]
[15] Bidelman GM. Towards an optimal paradigm for simultaneously recording cortical and brainstem auditory evoked potentials. J Neurosci Methods. 2015; 241:94-100. [DOI:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2014.12.019]
[16] Binder JR, Frost JA, Hammeke TA, Bellgowan PS, Springer JA, Kaufman JN, et al. Human temporal lobe activation by speech and nonspeech sounds. Cereb Cortex. 2000;10(5):512-28. [DOI:10.1093/cercor/10.5.512]
[17] Specht K, Reul J. Functional segregation of the temporal lobes into highly differentiated subsystems for auditory perception: an auditory rapid event-related fMRI-task. Neuroimage. 2003;20(4):1944-54. [DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.07.034]
[18] Uppenkamp S, Johnsrude IS, Norris D, Marslen-Wilson W, Patterson RD. Locating the initial stages of speechsound processing in human temporal cortex. Neuroimage. 2006;31(3):1284-96. [DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.01.004]
[19] Petkov CI, Kang X, Alho K, Bertrand O, Yund EW, Woods DL. Attentional modulation of human auditory cortex. Nat Neurosci. 2004;7(6):658-63. [DOI:10.1038/nn1256]
[20] Johnson JA, Zatorre RJ. Attention to simultaneous unrelated auditory and visual events: behavioral and neural correlates. Cereb Cortex. 2005;15(10):1609-20. [DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhi039]
[21] Sabri M, Binder JR, Desai R, Medler DA, Leitl MD, Liebenthal E. Attentional and linguistic interactions in speech perception. Neuroimage. 2008;39(3):1444-56. [DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.09.052]
[22] Honey GD, Bullmore ET, Sharma T. Prolonged reaction time to a verbal working memory task predicts increased power of posterior parietal cortical activation. Neuroimage. 2000;12(5):495-503. [DOI:10.1006/nimg.2000.0624]
[23] Adler CM, Sax KW, Holland SK, Schmithorst V, Rosenberg L, Strakowski SM. Changes in neuronal activation with increasing attention demand in healthy volunteers: an fMRI study. Synapse. 2001;42(4):266-72. [DOI:10.1002/syn.1112]
[24] Binder JR, Liebenthal E, Possing ET, Medler DA, Ward BD. Neural correlates of sensory and decision processes in auditory object identification. Nat Neurosci. 2004;7(3):295-301. [DOI:10.1038/nn1198]
Files
IssueVol 32 No 3 (2023) QRcode
SectionResearch Article(s)
DOI https://doi.org/10.18502/avr.v32i3.12934
Keywords
Subliminal perception unconscious perception unconsciousness subconsciousness subliminal auditory stimulus
Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Aarabi S, Mohammadkhani G, Farahani S, Jalaie S, Parand A, Pahlavan Yali K. Effect of Subliminal Auditory Stimulation on Components of Auditory Late Responses and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data in Adults with Normal Hearing. Aud Vestib Res. 2023;32(3):186-197.