Developing a Behavioral Box for Assessing Prepulse Inhibition and Neural Activity in Psychiatric Animal Models

Early-life distress is recognized as a potential precursor to neurodevelopmental disorders. One approach to investigating this condition in animal models is post-weaning social isolation. This early-life distress in rodents has been shown to lead to neural changes similar to those observed in patients with schizophrenia, including diminished prefrontal cortex volume, decreased dendritic spine density, and increased dopaminergic activity in the ventral tegmental area. The prepulse inhibition (PPI) paradigm is an established method for assessing sensory gating deficits in both human and animal models. PPI refers to the suppression of the startle reflex to a stronger acoustic stimulus (e.g., 120 dB pulse) when it is preceded by a weaker acoustic pre-stimulus (e.g., 65 dB pulse). This phenomenon is often reduced in psychiatric patients and animal models of psychiatric disorders. This article introduces a protocol to build a behavioral box for PPI studies, enabling the use of an accessible, cost-effective animal model of schizophrenia and the synchronization of the behavioral box with neuronal recordings from the model (e.g., electrophysiological recordings). This customized behavioral box effectively detected startle responses and facilitated PPI assessment with simultaneous neuronal recording in freely behaving rodents subjected to post-weaning isolation.