EEG ABRs Short ERPs I - Sensory Gates (1–200 ms) - Lat Brain Bee SfN2025

Consciousness in First Person 

I am Consciousness in milliseconds. Before I can recognize myself as thought, I already move as a current crossing volume conductors. At the snap of a sound, in less than ten milliseconds, I have already traveled through the auditory nerve, passed brainstem nuclei, and reached the midbrain. In fifty milliseconds, I filter useless repetitions. In one hundred, I detect the unexpected. In two hundred, I select what matters. I am electrical filters and rapid passages: invisible gatekeepers of attention.

1. What Are Short ERPs?

• Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are brain electrical responses to specific stimuli, recorded with EEG.
  
  

• Short-latency ERPs (1–200 ms) reflect the earliest stages of neural transmission and sensory selection.
  
  

• They divide into two main blocks:
  
  

• Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABR, 1–10 ms) → map the passage of sound through the auditory volume conductor.
  
  

• Cortical ERPs (P50, N100, P200, 50–200 ms) → sensory gates that filter, detect, and select stimuli.
  
  

2. ABR – The Pathway Trace of Audition (1–10 ms)

• The Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) registers successive waves (I–VII), each representing a relay station in the auditory pathway:
  
  

• Wave I → auditory nerve.
  
  

• Wave III → cochlear nucleus and superior olivary complex.
  
  

• Wave V → inferior colliculus in the midbrain.
  
  

• Each wave is a marker of electrical conduction jumps inside the auditory volume conductor, showing how sound travels through layered biological cables in microseconds.
  
  

• ABRs do not require consciousness but ensure the fidelity of transmission so perception can later emerge.
  
  

3. P50 – The First Cortical Filter (≈50 ms)

• Appears about 50 ms after a stimulus.
  
  

• Functions as a redundancy filter: repeated stimuli trigger reduced responses.
  
  

• Protects the brain from sensory overload, ensuring energy efficiency.
  
  

4. N100 – The Relevance Detector (≈100 ms)

• Emerges around 100 ms.
  
  

• Reflects the brain’s detection of unexpected or intense events.
  
  

• Stronger or more salient stimuli produce larger N100 amplitudes.
  
  

• Example: a gunshot in a video game or a sudden phone vibration.
  
  

5. P200 – Early Attentional Selection (≈150–200 ms)

• Acts as a reinforcer for potentially meaningful stimuli.
  
  

• Among dozens of notifications, P200 helps prioritize the socially or emotionally relevant one.
  
  

• Example: a personal message notification amidst many promotional alerts.
  
  

6. Games, Social Media, and the Sensory Gates

• Games use binaural sounds and 3D effects that directly activate the ABR, creating the sensation of spatial movement before awareness.
  
  

• Sharp sounds, flashes, and vibrations repeatedly trigger N100 and P200, keeping the brain on constant alert.
  
  

• This bombardment can “train” the brain into hyper-reactivity, increasing vulnerability to anxiety and distraction.
  
  

7. Transversal Frame – The 72h Loop (applied to short ERPs)

Critical Summary: From ABR to P200, electrical pathways and gates were designed to filter, protect, and prioritize. But today they are exploited as shortcuts to attention capture, leveraging the brain’s bioelectric vulnerability.

8. Critical Conclusion

Short ERPs (1–200 ms) show that consciousness begins long before reflection.

• The ABR reveals the physical passage of sound across relay stations in the auditory pathway.
  
  

• The P50, N100, and P200 serve as cortical gates, determining what enters the mind.
  
  

Games and social networks have learned to strike these markers in sequence, from the earliest auditory conductions to cortical attentional selection. The result is a brain conditioned to react, often without time to integrate.

Without awareness of these filters, we remain captive to external stimuli, stuck in shallow emotional loops and at risk of Anergia or aversive memories fixed by small differences in the real world.

References

• Hall, J. W. (2020). Auditory brainstem response: Clinical and research advances. Hearing Research.
  
  

• Javitt, D. C., & Freedman, R. (2020). Sensory gating deficits in psychiatric disorders: P50 as a biomarker. Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews.
  
  

• Näätänen, R., & Escera, C. (2021). Mismatch negativity and sensory ERP components: Insights into automatic processing. Frontiers in Neuroscience.
  
  

• Lavoie, S., et al. (2022). N100 and P200 ERP components as markers of attentional engagement. Biological Psychology.
  
  

• Rossion, B. (2023). ERP markers of rapid sensory selection in humans. NeuroImage.