Abstract
Attention to a prepulse presented shortly before a startling stimulus enhances prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle in normal people, but not in schizophrenics. Fear conditioning for the prepulse enhances PPI in socially reared, but not isolation-reared, rats. In humans, selective attention to acoustic signals against masking can be facilitated by precedence-effect-induced perceived spatial separation between the signal and the masker. This study investigated whether perceived spatial separation between a prepulse and a noise masker enhances PPI in socially reared rats and isolation-reared rats. The results show that both PPI and conditioning-induced PPI enhancement were larger in socially reared rats than in isolation-reared rats. More important, in socially reared, but not isolation-reared, rats, a further PPI enhancement was induced by precedence-effect-induced perceived separation between a prepulse and a masker only after the prepulse became fear conditioned. Thus, perceived separation facilitates normal rats’ attention to a conditioned prepulse and enhances PPI. Isolation rearing impairs rats’ ability to attend to ecologically significant acoustic events.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 30711120563, 30670704, 60605016, 60535030, and 60435010), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grants 2006AA01Z196 and 2006AA010103), the Trans-Century Training Program Foundation for the Talents by the State Education Commission, and “985” grants from Peking University.
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Du, Y., Li, J., Wu, X. et al. Precedence-effect-induced enhancement of prepulse inhibition in socially reared but not isolation-reared rats. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 9, 44–58 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.9.1.44
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.9.1.44