title: Reflex facilitation of the rabbit nictitating membrane response by an auditory stimulus as a function of interstimulus interval.
abstract: The ability of an auditory stimulus to facilitate the amplitude and latency of the unconditioned nictitating membrane (NM) response in rabbits was investigated over a wide range of interstimulus intervals (ISIs) for both delay (Experiments 1-4) and trace (Experiments 3 and 4) procedures. The auditory stimulus was a 1000-Hz tone (T) at either 85 or 95 dB, and the reflex-eliciting stimulus was a 2.0 psi (pounds per square inch) corneal air puff (AP). The results indicate that (a) robust facilitation of the NM response, as measured by an increased amplitude and a reduced latency, can be obtained at long ISIs (2,000-32,000 ms); (b) increasing the tone intensity can increase reflex facilitation of the peak amplitude; (c) at comparable ISIs, delay procedures produce more facilitation of both amplitude and latency than do trace procedures; and (d) when trace procedures are used, amplitude and latency facilitation by a 125-ms tone follows an inverted U-shaped ISI function in which facilitation peaks between 125 and 500 ms, rapidly decreases between 1,000 and 2,000 ms, and disappears by 4,000 ms.
authors.affiliation: Yale University.
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Weisz
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Walts
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001143:Arousal; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D001767:Blinking; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D007858:Learning; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011817:Rabbits; D011930:Reaction Time