Sex differences in prepulse inhibition of the acoustic startle response

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Kumari, Veena Gray, Jeffrey A. Gupta, Payal Luscher, Selina Sharma, Tonmoy
Copyright Year	2003
Abstract	Abstract The startle response is inhibited when the startle-eliciting stimulus is preceded 30–500 ms by a prepulse. This effect, known as prepulse inhibition (PPI), is believed to represent a sensorimotor gating mechanism, which protects the brain from experiencing sensory overload. PPI is disturbed in many psychiatric disorders. Within healthy populations, women show less PPI than men. This study employed a new PPI paradigm with a single prepulse or two prepulses to measure PPI in 15 men and 15 women. Startle stimuli were preceded on some trials by a single discrete prepulse with a 120-ms prepulse-to-pulse interval. On other trials, a second discrete prepulse preceded the first with 30–480-ms prepulse-to-prepulse intervals. Women showed less PPI than men with a single prepulse. PPI, however, was quantitatively identically reduced (greatest reduction when the second prepulse preceded the first with a 120-ms interval) in the two sexes by two-prepulse trials, relative to that with a single prepulse. Women showed a smooth transition from reduced PPI to an observed prepulse facilitation (PPF) with two prepulse trials. We conclude that sex difference consists in a general shift of the inhibition/facilitation curve in the direction of facilitation in women relative to men.
Starting Page	733
Ending Page	742
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00266-0
Alternate Webpage(s)	http://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/58499.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869%2802%2900266-0
Volume Number	35
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article