Td. Blumenthal, PREPULSE INHIBITION OF THE STARTLE EYEBLINK AS AN INDICATOR OF TEMPORAL SUMMATION, Perception & psychophysics, 57(4), 1995, pp. 487-494
The inhibition of the human startle eyeblink response was assessed in
three experiments in which the duration of the prepulse was manipulate
d. In all cases, inhibition of startle was more pronounced as prepulse
duration increased from 6 to 50 msec. Inhibition of startle amplitude
for single prepulses was not significantly different from that for pa
ired prepulses (Experiment 1), but inhibition was more pronounced as p
repulse intensity increased (Experiment 3). Varying the interval betwe
en prepulse offset acid startle-stimulus onset had no significant effe
ct on inhibition (Experiment 2). These data demonstrate the sensitivit
y of startle inhibition to prepulse duration, and suggest that this re
sponse system can be used to evaluate early temporal summation in the
auditory system.