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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Health and Clinical Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1507291

Loudness Dependence of the Auditory Evoked Potential: Temporal stability, associations to sociodemographic variables, and functional significance -implications for clinical research

Provisionally accepted
Stein Andersson Stein Andersson 1*Trine Rygvold Trine Rygvold 2Christoffer Hatlestad-Hall Christoffer Hatlestad-Hall 3
  • 1 Dept. of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
  • 2 Department of Clinical Neuroscience for Children, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
  • 3 Department of Neurology, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Oslo, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) has been suggested as a biomarker for central serotonergic function, and as such a proxy for serotonin related psychiatric symptomatology and intervention outcome, particularly in depression. This study aims to explore LDAEP characteristics in a large healthy population by assessing its test-retest reliability and examining associations with sociodemographic variables, psychological distress, and performancebased cognitive function. Our sample included 100 healthy adults whose LDAEP was measured and correlated with age, sex, self-reported psychological distress, and cognitive performance. Participants examined twice (n = 38) showed high test-retest reliability with intraclass correlations (ICCs) between 0.67 and 0.89 over a 2-to-3-month interval. Furthermore, the magnitude of the LDAEP was significantly higher in women than men, and female hormonal contraceptive users exhibited higher LDAEP than non-users. In females, age was inversely correlated with LDAEP. However, no significant associations were found between LDAEP and measures of psychological distress, including depressive symptoms, nor with cognitive test performance. These results underline LDAEP's reliability as a biomarker over time, but also highlight age, sex and hormonal contraceptive use as significant factors influencing the LDAEP. Future research in clinical population should take these results into account, with an emphasis on providing the necessary sample sizes for relevant subgroup analyses.

    Keywords: LDAEP, test-retest reliability, sociodemographics, hormonal contraceptives, psychological distress, Cognitive Function

    Received: 07 Oct 2024; Accepted: 13 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Andersson, Rygvold and Hatlestad-Hall. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Stein Andersson, Dept. of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, 0317, Norway

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.