title: The effects of lead stimulus and reflex stimulus modality on modulation of the blink reflex at very short, short, and long lead intervals.
abstract: The blink reflex is modulated if a weak lead stimulus precedes the blink-eliciting stimulus. In two experiments, we examined the effects of the sensory modality of the lead and blink-eliciting stimuli on blink modulation. Acoustic, visual, or tactile lead stimuli were followed by an acoustic (Experiment 1) or an electrotactile (Experiment 2) blink-eliciting stimulus at lead intervals of -30, 0, 30, 60, 120, 240, 360, and 4,500 msec. The inhibition of blink magnitude at the short (60- to 360-msec) lead intervals and the facilitation of blink magnitude at the long (4,500-msec) lead interval observed for each lead stimulus modality was relatively unaffected by the blink-eliciting stimulus modality. The facilitation of blink magnitude at the very short (-30- to 30-msec) lead intervals was dependent on the combination of the lead and the blink-eliciting stimulus modalities. Modality specific and nonspecific processes operate at different levels of perceptual processing.
authors.affiliation: School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. d.neumann@griffith.edu.au
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Neumann
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001767:Blinking / Q000502:physiology; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009433:Neural Inhibition; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values; D013216:Reflex, Startle / Q000502:physiology; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology; D014276:Trigeminal Nerve / Q000502:physiology