title: Acoustic prepulse inhibition: one ear is better than two, but why and when?
abstract: We examined whether monaural prepulses produce more prepulse inhibition (PPI) because they might be more attention capturing (unambiguous to locate) than binaural prepulses. Monaural and binaural PPI was tested under normal and verbal and visuospatial attention manipulation conditions in 55 healthy men, including 29 meditators. Attention manipulations abolished monaural PPI superiority, similarly in meditators and meditation-naïve individuals, and this was most strongly evident for right ear PPI under visuospatial attention manipulation. Meditators performed better than meditation-naïve individuals on attention tasks (verbal: more targets detected; visuospatial: faster reaction time). Spatial attention processes contribute to monaural PPI, particularly with the right ear. Better attentional performance, with similar attentional modulation of PPI, may indicate a stronger attentional capacity in meditators, relative to meditation-naïve individuals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London, UK; NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
authors.forename: Veena
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kumari
authors.forename: Aseel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hamid
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Brand
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Antonova
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019122:Meditation; D008875:Middle Aged; D065808:Prepulse Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Attention; Human sensorimotor gating; Mindfulness; Startle