Assessment of murine startle reactivity, prepulse inhibition, and habituation.

The study of the startle response and its plasticity provides a powerful research paradigm for examining the neural control of behavior. The neural substrates underlying phenomena such as information-processing functions, including sensorimotor gating, affective modulation, and habituation, can be studied using startle plasticity as an operational measure. The mouse is rapidly becoming the most powerful model system for the study of human CNS function and is highly amenable to both genetic and pharmacological study. This unit describes procedures for the assessment of the startle response to acoustic stimuli in mice; methods for assessing prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle, with treatments including drug administration and genetic manipulation; and methods for testing habituation.