Repeated elicitation of the acoustic startle reflex leads to sensitisation in subsequent avoidance behaviour and induces fear conditioning.
Repeated elicitation of the acoustic startle reflex leads to sensitisation in subsequent avoidance behaviour and induces fear conditioning.
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DOI：
10.1186/1471-2202-12-30
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发表时间：
2011-04-13
期刊：
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Janik VM
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Götz T;Janik VM
自主反射使动物能够对潜在的威胁迅速作出反应，防止受伤，并调解战斗或逃跑反应。突然发作的强烈声刺激引起惊吓反射，而类似强度但上升时间较长的刺激仅引起心脏防御反应。在实验室环境中，习惯化似乎会影响所有这些反射，因此反应幅度通常会随着重复暴露于刺激而降低。惊吓反射已经成为研究简单学习过程和情绪处理的神经基础的模型系统，并且经常被用作医学应用中的诊断工具。然而，以前的研究并没有让动物避免刺激，重复惊吓的进化功能和长期行为后果仍然是推测性的。在这项研究中，我们调查的后续行为与惊吓反射在野生捕获的动物使用的实验装置，允许个人表现出回避行为。我们提出的证据表明，反复引发的声音惊吓反射导致快速和明显的敏感化持续的空间回避行为在灰海豹（海狮）。动物发展出快速的逃跑反应，离开暴露池，并表现出明显的恐惧条件反射迹象。一旦敏感，海豹甚至会避开靠近声源的已知食物来源。与此相反，动物暴露于非惊人的（长上升时间）刺激相同的最大声压习惯和飞行反应减弱或从一开始就没有。灰海豹的惊吓阈值以感觉水平为单位表示，与其他哺乳动物报告的阈值相当（93 dB）。我们的研究结果表明，声惊吓反射在调解飞行反应中起着至关重要的作用，并强烈影响动物的动机状态超出短期肌肉反应，通过调解长期回避。因此，反射不仅是情绪状态的量度，而且影响情绪处理。惊吓反射的生物学功能很可能与介导快速飞行反应有关。这些数据表明，人为噪声源的反复惊吓可能会对长期行为产生严重影响。未来，需要研究这些影响是否与个体健康甚至个体寿命的减少有关。
Autonomous reflexes enable animals to respond quickly to potential threats, prevent injury and mediate fight or flight responses. Intense acoustic stimuli with sudden onsets elicit a startle reflex while stimuli of similar intensity but with longer rise times only cause a cardiac defence response. In laboratory settings, habituation appears to affect all of these reflexes so that the response amplitude generally decreases with repeated exposure to the stimulus. The startle reflex has become a model system for the study of the neural basis of simple learning processes and emotional processing and is often used as a diagnostic tool in medical applications. However, previous studies did not allow animals to avoid the stimulus and the evolutionary function and long-term behavioural consequences of repeated startling remain speculative. In this study we investigate the follow-up behaviour associated with the startle reflex in wild-captured animals using an experimental setup that allows individuals to exhibit avoidance behaviour. We present evidence that repeated elicitation of the acoustic startle reflex leads to rapid and pronounced sensitisation of sustained spatial avoidance behaviour in grey seals (Halichoerus grypus). Animals developed rapid flight responses, left the exposure pool and showed clear signs of fear conditioning. Once sensitised, seals even avoided a known food source that was close to the sound source. In contrast, animals exposed to non-startling (long rise time) stimuli of the same maximum sound pressure habituated and flight responses waned or were absent from the beginning. The startle threshold of grey seals expressed in units of sensation levels was comparable to thresholds reported for other mammals (93 dB). Our results demonstrate that the acoustic startle reflex plays a crucial role in mediating flight responses and strongly influences the motivational state of an animal beyond a short-term muscular response by mediating long-term avoidance. The reflex is therefore not only a measure of emotional state but also influences emotional processing. The biological function of the startle reflex is most likely associated with mediating rapid flight responses. The data indicate that repeated startling by anthropogenic noise sources might have severe effects on long-term behaviour. Future, studies are needed to investigate whether such effects can be associated with reduced individual fitness or even longevity of individuals.
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