Robust and replicable measurement for prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle response.

ABSTRACT: Measuring animal behavior in the context of experimental manipulation is critical for modeling, and understanding neuropsychiatric disease. Prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle response (PPI) is a behavioral phenomenon studied extensively for this purpose, but the results of PPI studies are often inconsistent. As a result, the utility of this phenomenon remains uncertain. Here, we deconstruct the phenomenon of PPI and confirm several limitations of the methodology traditionally utilized to describe PPI, including that the underlying startle response has a non-Gaussian distribution, and that the traditional PPI metric changes with different stimuli. We then develop a novel model that reveals PPI to be a combination of the previously appreciated scaling of the startle response, as wel

SUBMITTER: Miller EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7483293 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature