This study pertains to assessing the effects of electric shocks that are used in the treatment of severe self-injurious behavior. With pain sensation and startle response as the dependent variables and focusing versus distraction of recipient's attention to the electric shocks as the independent variable, these stimuli were administered to 60 paid volunteers. Using ANOVA, no significant effect ...

AIMS Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle reflex, which refers to the ability of innocuous sensory events to reduce the startle reflex, has been described as an operational measure of sensorimotor gating that is reduced in several neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, but experience is lacking in addictions and alcoholism. The aim of this study was to examine the existence of i...

Emotion regulation difficulties are implicated in the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). However, research has been limited by an almost exclusive reliance on self-report. This study is the first to use the emotion-modulated startle paradigm (EMSP) to investigate emotional reactivity and voluntary emotion regulation in individuals with AN. Twenty women with AN viewed negative...

Cardiac modulation of startle eye blink has been introduced as a methodology to reflect baro-afferent signal transmission. Recent studies showed that affective startle modulation is specific to left-ear presentation that may be due to hemispheric specificity in processing emotional-relevant stimuli, similar to the processing of visceral- and baro-afferent stimuli. To explore whether cardiac mod...

In many species, rapid defensive reflexes are paramount to escaping acute danger. These reflexes are modulated by the state of the environment. This is exemplified in fear-potentiated startle, a more vigorous startle response during conditioned anticipation of an unrelated threatening event. Extant explanations of this phenomenon build on descriptive models of underlying psychological states, o...

OBJECTIVE Behaviorally inhibited children face increased risk for anxiety disorders, although factors that predict which children develop a disorder remain poorly specified. The current study examines whether the startle reflex response may be used to differentiate between behaviorally inhibited adolescents with and without a history of anxiety. METHOD Participants were assessed for behaviora...

Recently, we reported that discrete (4-sec) olfactory cues paired with footshock serve as effective conditioned stimuli (CSs) for potentiating the acoustic startle response in rats using the fear-potentiated startle paradigm. Because odors are such salient cues for the rat, and because of the robust olfactory conditioning observed previously, the current studies investigated second-order fear c...

Impaired sensorimotor gating occurs in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and can be measured using the prepulse inhibition (PPI) paradigm of the acoustic startle response. This assay is frequently used to validate animal models of neuropsychiatric disorders and to explore the therapeutic potential of new drugs. The underlying neural network of PPI has been extensively studied wit...

The amplitude of the acoustic startle response (ASP) in rats is increased in the presence of a cue that has previously been paired with an aversive stimulus such as a footshock. This phenomenon is called fear-potentiated startle and is a model to study the neuronal and neurochemical mechanisms of the acquisition and expression of fear. The present study investigated the role in fear-potentiated...

Here we applied behavioral testing, pharmacology, and in vivo electrophysiology to determine the function of the serotonin 5-HT5A receptor in goldfish startle plasticity and sensorimotor gating. In an initial series of behavioral experiments, we characterized the effects of a selective 5-HT5A antagonist, SB-699551 (3-cyclopentyl-N-[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl]-N-[(4'-{[(2-phenylethyl)amino]methyl}-4...