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Cell Biology JoVE (Open Access) Citable · DOI

Habituation and Prepulse Inhibition of Acoustic Startle in Rodents

DOI: 10.3791/3446-v
What you'll learn
  • ✓ Perform habituation and prepulse inhibition protocols to assess sensory gating in rodents
  • ✓ Establish acoustic startle input/output functions and measure short- and long-term habituation
  • ✓ Interpret PPI data as a biomarker for sensory gating deficits in neuropsychiatric disease models
Protocol

Habituation and prepulse inhibition of startle are operational measures of sensory gating. Sensory gating is disrupted in schizophrenia, and some other mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. We here describe a standard protocol to assess short-term and long-term habituation as well as prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle responses in rats and mice.

Difficulty
intermediate
Total time
~1–2 hours per animal (including acclimation, habituation, PPI, and long-term habituation sessions across days)
Model organism
Rat, Mouse

Steps

1
Prepare acoustic startle apparatus and equipment

Calibrate the startle chamber, sound delivery system, and motion sensor according to manufacturer specifications. Verify acoustic stimulus intensity and pulse timing before animal testing.

▶ 00:49
2
Acclimate animals and establish input/output function

Allow rodents to habituate to the testing room environment and the startle chamber. Present graded acoustic stimuli to determine the relationship between sound intensity and startle response magnitude.

▶ 01:24
3
Measure habituation, prepulse inhibition, and long-term habituation

Deliver repeated startle pulses to measure short-term habituation, present prepulse-pulse pairs at varying intervals to quantify PPI, and assess long-term habituation across separate testing sessions.

▶ 02:52
4
Analyze and interpret startle response measurements

Calculate habituation slopes, PPI percentages, and long-term habituation decay using the recorded motion data. Compare group differences in sensory gating metrics.

▶ 06:49
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