Storozheva ZI. Startle response and its prepulse modification in health and under different psychopathologies: Could we find any specific patterns? World J Psychiatry 2025; 15(8): 107791 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i8.107791]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Zinaida I Storozheva, Senior Scientist, Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neurochemistry, Department of Neuropsychopharmacology, Federal Research Center for Innovator and Emerging Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Technologies, Baltiiskaya, 8, Moscow 125315, Russia. storozheva_zi@mail.ru
Research Domain of This Article
Neurosciences
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatry. Aug 19, 2025; 15(8): 107791 Published online Aug 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i8.107791
Startle response and its prepulse modification in health and under different psychopathologies: Could we find any specific patterns?
Zinaida I Storozheva
Zinaida I Storozheva, Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neurochemistry, Department of Neuropsychopharmacology, Federal Research Center for Innovator and Emerging Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Technologies, Moscow 125315, Russia
Author contributions: Storozheva ZI designed the review framework, identified the research focus, conducted the literature search and analysis of the data, drafted the manuscript, provided critical revisions and final approval of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Zinaida I Storozheva, Senior Scientist, Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neurochemistry, Department of Neuropsychopharmacology, Federal Research Center for Innovator and Emerging Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Technologies, Baltiiskaya, 8, Moscow 125315, Russia. storozheva_zi@mail.ru
Received: April 2, 2025 Revised: May 2, 2025 Accepted: July 3, 2025 Published online: August 19, 2025 Processing time: 132 Days and 0.3 Hours
Abstract
The startle response (SR) is a generalized defensive response elicited by the presentation of a sudden intense stimulus. The presentation of a less intense signal (prepulse) before the central stimulus (pulse) affects the amplitude and latency of SR differently depending on the prepulse lead interval. The most studied form of such changes is prepulse inhibition (PPI), i.e. a decrease in SR amplitude at lead intervals of 50-500 ms. Prepulse facilitation, i.e. an increase in SR amplitude, can also be observed at lead intervals of 2000-4500 ms. The PPI deficiency has been found in a variety of psychopathologies and it has been suggested that it is a transdiagnostic phenomenon. However, some data from the literature support the existence of specific different nosologies, such as neurophysiological, neurochemical and molecular mechanisms that cause PPI lowering and affect prepulse facilitation of SR. This review provides a comparative analysis of studies on SR prepulse modification in healthy subjects and different groups of patients with mental or neurological disorders. The results of such an analysis may help to define directions for further research to improve methods of early diagnosis and to improve the validity of translational models.
Core Tip: There are several reviews in the literature dedicated to phenomenon of prepulse modification of the startle response. In these manuscripts its deficiency in neuropsychiatric disorders regarded as transdiagnostic process. Here we review the evidence in favor of the specificity of certain prepulse modification changes for certain pathologies of pathology and consider the prospects for future research on this issue.
