Auditory evoked potentials, motor potentials and reaction time.

Abstract Evoked potentials from simple and choice reaction time (RT) tasks were determined separately for trials in the fast, middle and slow thirds of the RT distributions. We found that those trials with faster RT also produced a more negative N1 peak, less negative peak at N2 and N3 and more positive peaks at P3 and P4; the choice task also produced significantly larger deflections at N1 and P3 than did the simple task. In the choice RT condition, the stimuli that did not require a motor response (S−) yielded a P3 deflection slightly greater than that produced by the response stimuli (S+) in the fast third of the RT distribution, whereas the S− stimuli produced an N1 deflection approximately equal to the corresponding deflection produced by S+ in the middle third of the RT distribution. This difference between N1 and P3 was interpreted to mean that they were partially independent in that the amplitudes of both deflections were influenced by changes in background arousal, whereas only P3 was influenced by a reactive factor. Various types of analyses suggested that response-related potentials could not have been responsible for any of the results obtained.

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