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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Physiol Behav. 2020 May 1;222:112901. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.112901

Figure 2. Schematic details of stimulus presentations and response measurement.

Figure 2.

The x-axis is time, not to scale. The y-axis is volts, also not to scale, in three different channels. The top trace, ‘Vibe’, is the signal to the shaker, in this case 9 cycles, as in the ‘25ms’, 360 Hz stimulus. The middle trace, ‘Aud’, is the signal to the speakers, first an 80 dB SPL auditory prepulse, followed after an inter-stimulus-interval (ISI, 200 ms for 25ms prepulses) by the startle eliciting stimulus (SES, 110 dB SPL for 15 ms). The horizontal ‘brace’ labelled MS indicates duration of the somatosensory and/or auditory prepulses; MS was either 0, 4, 9, 25 or 45 ms.. The bottom trace, Accel, is input from the accelerometer: first the physical response of vibratory pre-pulse, which has some rise/fall time and resonance, followed by the whole-body jerk of the mouse elicited by the SES. RMS voltage from the accelerometer is calculated for 100 ms starting at the onset of the SES. There is then a random inter-trial-interval (ITI of 15–25 s). This example would be of a multimodal trial because there are simultaneous vibratory and auditory prepulses. There are also unimodal and control trials where various signals are absent, but the response is always measured for 100ms.