FIGURE 8.

GC-B KO mice maintained subtle changes of temporal features of the acoustic startle response (ASR) and prepulse inhibition (PPI). (A) Mean ± SEM ASR amplitude growth of GC-B WT and GC-B KO mice shown for increasing startle stimulus SPL. There was no significant difference between genotypes for stimulus SPLs between 75 and 115 dB SPL. (B) In both genotypes ASR amplitude increased with increasing stimulus durations between 0.5 and 20 ms. The mean ± SEM maximum ASR was similar for stimulus durations up to 4 ms in both genotypes but smaller for stimulus durations between 5 and 8 ms in GC-B KO compared to GC-B WT mice. This reduction in temporal summation was significant. (C) A prepulse with different lead time was presented before the startle stimulus, which elicited prepulse facilitation of the ASR (PPF, 3–6 ms lead time) or PPI of the ASR PPI (12–400 ms lead time). The broken line marks the zero line for ASR change; values above this line correspond to increase of the ASR (PPF), values below the broken line correspond to reduction of the ASR (PPI). Mean ± SEM change of the ASR resulted in a statistically non-significant trend (p = 0.0935) for reduction of PPI in GC-B KO compared to GC-B WT mice. (D) Presenting a gap in noise as a startle response modulating prepulse (gap-detection) resulted in similar PPI or PPF in GC-B WT and GC-B KO mice across the explored gap duration (lower panel) and gap SPL (upper panel).