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Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Habituation and Prepulse Inhibition of Acoustic Startle in Rodents
Published on: September 1, 2011
Non-dual awareness and sensory processing in meditators: Insights from startle reflex modulation
Veena Kumari1, Umisha Tailor2, Anam Saifullah1
1Division of Psychology, Department of Life Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, UK; Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, UK.
None:
Startle modulation paradigms, namely habituation and prepulse inhibition (PPI), can offer insight into the brain's early information processing mechanisms that might be impacted by regular meditation practice. Habituation refers to decreasing response to a repeatedly-presented startle stimulus, reflecting its redundancy. PPI refers to response reduction when a startling stimulus "pulse" is preceded by a weaker sensory stimulus "prepulse" and provides an operational measure of sensorimotor gating. Here, we examined habituation and PPI of the acoustic startle response in regular meditators (n = 32), relative to meditation-naïve individuals (n = 36). Overall, there was no significant difference between meditators and non-meditators in habituation or PPI, but there was significantly greater PPI in meditators who self-reported being able to enter and sustain non-dual awareness during their meditation practice (n = 18) relative to those who could not (n = 14). Together, these findings suggest that subjective differences in meditation experience may be associated with differential sensory processing characteristics in meditators.
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