Evaluating the Modulation of the Acoustic Startle Reflex in Children and Adolescents via Vertical EOG and EEG: Sex, Age, and Behavioral Effects

Giannopoulos, Anastasios E.; Zioga, Ioanna; Papageorgiou, Panos; Pervanidou, Panagiota; Makris, Gerasimos; Chrousos, George P.; Stachtea, Xanthi; Capsalis, Christos N.; Papageorgiou, Charalabos

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.798667

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…Pharmacological and imaging research may then wish to explore the role of oestrogen and progesterone in PPI to examine the role of sex hormones in clinical disorders. Secondly, the effect of age ( Ellwanger et al, 2003 ; Giannopoulos et al, 2022 ) and nicotine ( Baschnagel and Hawk, 2008 ) was not explored and has previously been shown to affect PPI and PPF. In addition, test-retest reliability of PPF and internal consistency (i.e., how PPI/F varies across blocks; Supplemental Appendix B ) should be established to better understand the order effect on PPF and implications for designing PPI/F studies for clinical research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of stimulus onset asynchrony, task order, sex and hormonal contraception on prepulse inhibition and prepulse facilitation: Methodological considerations for drug and imaging research

2022

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Background: Prepulse-induced startle modulation occurs when a weak sensory stimulus (‘prepulse’) is presented before a startling sensory stimulus (‘pulse’), producing an inhibited (Prepulse Inhibition, PPI) or facilitated (Prepulse Facilitation, PPF) startle response. We recently identified several gaps and outlined future lines of enquiry to enable a fuller understanding of the neurobiology of PPI and PPF in healthy and clinical populations. However, before embarking on these studies, it is important to consider how task and population characteristics affect these phenomena in healthy humans. Methods: We examined PPI and PPF in separate tasks, with counterbalanced task order across participants in one session, using a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), in 48 healthy adults (23 men, 25 women; 10 hormonal contraceptive users) to determine which SOAs produce the strongest PPI and PPF and also explored how sex and hormonal contraception might influence PPI and PPF under these experimental conditions. Results: Both PPI and PPF were affected by SOA, with greatest PPI observed at 60 and 120 ms, and greatest PPF at 4500 and 6000 ms. PPI was influenced by sex (more PPI in men than women) and hormonal contraception, whereas PPF was affected by task order (greater PPF when the PPF task followed, rather than preceded, the PPI task). Conclusions: Our findings indicate that studies of PPI and PPF need to consider, not only sex and hormonal status of study participants, but also task characteristics and presentation order to reduce variance and increase replicability across studies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The influence of stimulus onset asynchrony, task order, sex and hormonal contraception on prepulse inhibition and prepulse facilitation: Methodological considerations for drug and imaging research

2022

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“…In these cases, PPI can be a valid tool to monitor such changes, helping to understand the effects of age on cognition and brain functioning. Few studies were dedicated to investigate the effects of aging on the phenomena associated with startle reflex ( 2 , 3 , 19 ). Different from PPI, that refers to a decrease in response to a stimulus due to the presence of a weaker stimulus previously presented, habituation is defined as a decrease in responding to an initially novel stimulus when it is presented repeatedly at rates slow enough, producing a sensory adaptation ( 3 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To understand the impact of the aging process in neurophysiological measures is relevant to point to the possibility of using the PPI measure to monitor these changes. The maturation of the ability to modulate the startle response begins after the third year of age, with no significant modulatory ability being observed before that ( 19 , 20 ). Levels of acoustic startle reflex maturation seem to increase throughout childhood and adolescence (6–18 years) ( 19 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-related changes in prepulse inhibition of the startle response

et al. 2023

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IntroductionAcoustic prepulse inhibition of the startle response (PPI) is a phenomenon characterized by the reduction in the startle reflex caused by the presence of weak and brief stimulus before an intense and sudden stimulus (pulse). These phenomena can be observed in several species, but in humans it is commonly measured by the eyeblink using electromyography. PPI works as an operational measure of sensorimotor gating, which is the ability to suppress motor responses for sensory stimulus. Healthy aging is marked by several changes in neural processing, like inhibitory functioning decline. In this line, PPI measure can be a potential biomarker for changes related to the aging process.MethodsIn this research we aim to investigate if PPI is reduced with aging and if this reduction would be associated with cognitive functioning of older adults. To this aim, we compared PPI levels of older adults (over 60 years old) with PPI levels of young adults (from 18 to 28 years old).ResultsWith that, we found, significantly lower PPI level (F[1,25] = 7.44 p = 0.01) and lower startle amplitude startle amplitude: (U = 26.000 p = 0.001) in older adults than in young adults. However, we did not find differences in levels of habituation (T = −1.1 p = 0.28) and correlation between PPI and cognition within the sample of healthy older adults.DiscussionOur results demonstrate that aging is a factor that affects PPI and that it does not seem to predict cognition, however, future studies should explore the potential of using PPI for monitoring cognitive changes associated with techniques such as cognitive training.

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“…In the Supplemental Results in the online supplemental materials, we analyzed the difference of the startling response across all blocks for testing the habituation of SR. And we analyzed the baseline of startling response (only SS trials) between the high-and low-load condition to testing the interference of the attentional load on blink musculature. Finally, PPI is found to be sexually dimorphic, with females exhibiting less PPI than males (Aasen et al, 2005;Giannopoulos et al, 2022;Naysmith et al, 2021). We analyzed the potential effects of gender in the attentional load on PPI.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High visual perceptual load reduces prepulse inhibition induced by task-unrelated and task-related sound.

Chen¹,

Yang²,

Ge³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is an automatic and pre-attentive sensorimotor gating process. Several studies have shown that advanced cognitive functions can modulate PPI. This study aimed to further elucidate the modulatory effect of attentional resource allocation on PPI. We examined the differences in PPI between high and low attentional loads. First, we verified that the adapted feature versus combination visual search paradigm could produce high and low perceptual load differences according to the task demands. Second, we measured the participants' task-unrelated PPI during the visual search task and found that the PPI in the high-load condition was significantly lower than that in the low-load condition. To further elucidate the role of attentional resources, we tested task-related PPI using a dual-task paradigm in which participants were instructed to complete a visual task with an auditory discrimination task. We found a result similar to that of the task-unrelated experiment. The participants in the high-load condition had less PPI than those in the low-load condition. Finally, we ruled out the possibility that the working memory load explains the modulation of PPI. In line with the theory of PPI modulation, these results suggest that allocating limited attentional resources to the prepulse modulates PPI. Public Significance StatementPeople receive considerable sensory information from their surrounding environments. The gating mechanism-the inhibition of irrelevant information that ensures the processing of target information -plays a crucial role in human activity. This study investigated whether prepulse inhibition is affected by different visual perceptual load levels. Our study provides necessary new insights into the understanding of how modulated PPI effects the interaction between attentional load and PPI.

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Evaluating the Modulation of the Acoustic Startle Reflex in Children and Adolescents via Vertical EOG and EEG: Sex, Age, and Behavioral Effects

Cited by 6 publications

References 94 publications

The influence of stimulus onset asynchrony, task order, sex and hormonal contraception on prepulse inhibition and prepulse facilitation: Methodological considerations for drug and imaging research

The influence of stimulus onset asynchrony, task order, sex and hormonal contraception on prepulse inhibition and prepulse facilitation: Methodological considerations for drug and imaging research

Age-related changes in prepulse inhibition of the startle response

High visual perceptual load reduces prepulse inhibition induced by task-unrelated and task-related sound.

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