Emotion-modulated startle is a robust phenomenon that has been demonstrated in a wide range of experimental situations. Similarly, heart rate variability (HRV) has been associated with a diverse range of processes including affective and attentional regulation. The present study sought to examine the relationship between these two important measures of affective behavior. Ninety female particip...

BACKGROUND Cannabis use is associated with an attention-dependent deficit in prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex (PPI). The aim of the current study was to investigate startle habituation in cannabis users and healthy controls during two attentional tasks. METHODS Auditory startle reflex was recorded from orbicularis oculi muscle while participants (12 controls and 16 regular cannabis u...

Errors are aversive, motivationally-salient events which prime defensive action. This is reflected in a potentiated startle reflex after the commission of an error. The current study replicates and extends previous work examining the time course of error-potentiated startle as a function of startle lag (i.e., 300 ms or 800 ms following correct and error responses). In addition, the relationship...

Startle potentiation is a well-validated translational measure of negative affect. Startle potentiation is widely used in clinical and affective science, and there are multiple approaches for its quantification. The three most commonly used approaches quantify startle potentiation as the increase in startle response from a neutral to threat condition based on (1) raw potentiation, (2) standardi...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The increase in resistance to passive muscle stretch in a paretic limb due to an upper motor neurone lesion is often referred to as muscle spasticity. However, this terminology is inaccurate and does not take into account the complex pathogenesis of the condition or describe the factors that contribute to the clinically observed changes in muscle tone. In this report we...

The acoustic startle reflex and its modulation by prepulse inhibition (PPI) and habituation are used in many studies in different fields of neuropsychiatric research. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of age and gender on PPI, startle magnitude, and habituation in healthy human volunteers. Twenty-seven male and 28 female participants of four different age groups (range: 20-60 yea...

BACKGROUND The startle reflex is potentiated by aversive states. It has been proposed that phasic startle potentiation to a threat cue and sustained startle potentiation to contextual stimuli reflect distinct processes mediated by different brain structures. The present study tested the hypothesis that alprazolam would reduce the sustained startle potentiation to contextual threats but not the ...

We investigated the eyeblink component of acoustic startle reactions in maltreated children. Previous research indicates that acoustic startle is enhanced in adult males with posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) whereas findings on women with PTSD have been inconsistent. In accord with the only previous report for children with PTSD, we found that maltreated boys, particularly those who had be...

OBJECTIVE This report describes the consensus outcome of an interdisciplinary workshop that was held at the National Institutes of Health in April 2001. The purpose of the workshop and this article are to define the terms "spasticity," "dystonia," and "rigidity" as they are used to describe clinical features of hypertonia in children. The definitions presented here are designed to allow differe...

Measures of acoustic startle such as prepulse inhibition (PPI) and startle latency have been found to be impaired in schizophrenia, and are commonly thought to be related to cognitive deficits in this disease. However, findings about the relationship between startle variables and cognitive performance have been equivocal. In this study, we examined correlations between startle measures (baselin...