Paste or enter startle trials, separate pulse-alone from no-stim and prepulse trials, then export animal-level ASR and habituation results.
| Animal | Group | Trial 1 | Trial 2 | Trial 3 | Trial 4 | Trial 5 | Trial 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Format: animal,group,type,amp. Types are pulse, noStim, or prepulse.
| Animal | Group | Mean pulse | No-stim baseline | Habituation slope |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | vehicle | 201.25 | 6.00 | 0.000 |
| M2 | vehicle | 195.00 | 5.00 | 0.000 |
| M3 | drug | 147.00 | 4.00 | 0.000 |
When to use
Do not use for
If one group has very low pulse-alone startle, downstream percent PPI can look unstable. Review raw startle amplitude before interpreting a PPI deficit.
High no-stim amplitude suggests baseline platform movement. Inspect animals, restraint tubes, and chamber vibration before treating the session as valid.
Use a habituation block size that reflects how pulse-alone trials were distributed. Very small blocks are noisy, while very large blocks can hide early-session decline.
Pulse-alone startle is the arithmetic mean of trials marked pulse. No-stim baseline is the arithmetic mean of trials marked noStim. Habituation slope is a linear regression slope through pulse-alone block means. Group SEM uses sample standard deviation divided by square root of n.
Last validated 2026-04-30. Calculations are designed for planning and documentation support; verify procurement decisions against manufacturer specifications or institutional SOPs.
ConductScience Acoustic Startle Analyzer (v1.0). ConductScience, Inc. 2026. Available at: https://conductscience.com/tools/acoustic-startle-analyzer
This tool computes descriptive statistics from user-entered startle amplitudes. It does not acquire raw signals, set exclusion criteria, or replace protocol-specific statistical analysis.
Acoustic startle is a short-latency defensive reflex evoked by an abrupt high-intensity sound. Rodent startle platforms convert the animal response into a peak force, acceleration, or voltage value. The pulse-alone trials give a direct readout of startle magnitude before any prepulse inhibition calculation.
This analyzer keeps the raw startle workflow separate from PPI. It reports pulse-alone amplitude, no-stim baseline, and habituation slope so labs can see whether group differences are sensory, motor, baseline, or session-dynamics effects.
For each animal, the tool averages only pulse-alone trials for mean startle amplitude. No-stim trials are averaged separately as the movement baseline. Prepulse trials are ignored for the raw pulse-alone mean.
Habituation slope is computed by grouping pulse-alone trials into fixed-size blocks, averaging each block, and fitting a linear slope across block index. Group summaries use animal-level values and report mean +/- SEM.
Use pseudorandom trial order, keep inter-trial intervals consistent with the protocol, and include no-stim trials throughout the session. Calibrate speakers with the microphone at animal height and check platform response before each study series.
Analyze pulse-alone startle and habituation before interpreting PPI. A group with low baseline startle may show unreliable percent PPI because the denominator is compressed.
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