No Evidence of Perturbed Early Auditory Processing in Undergraduates With a History of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Most traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are classified as mild (mTBI), yet they can still be associated with lasting behavioral, sensory, cognitive, and neural changes. Recent studies show that individuals with a history of mTBI (hmTBI) experience auditory sensitivities (e.g., noise annoyance and hyperacusis). Here, we tested whether we could detect early auditory processing alterations in individuals with a hmTBI using well-characterized event-related potentials (ERPs) sensitive to auditory sensory responses, specifically the N100, mismatch negativity (MMN), and the deviance-related negativity (DRN) waveform. Seventeen participants with a self-reported hmTBI and 25 control participants completed a passive oddball task in which infrequent pitch-deviant tones were interleaved amidst frequent standard tones, during which EEG was recorded. We examined N100, MMN, and DRN amplitude and N100 and MMN latency, using frequentist and Bayesian analyses. Across analyses, there were no significant group differences. The Bayes factors provided anecdotal to moderate support for the null hypothesis. These results suggest that undergraduates with hmTBI may be more likely to exhibit preserved early auditory processing. Future research should examine whether later, top-down processes contribute to enduring auditory symptoms.