Med Associates Video Freeze® System Capable of Scoring Acoustic Startle Reflex Response in Mice

In a paper just published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Pantoni, colleagues from the lab of Dr. Stephan Anagnostaras at UCSD, and Dr. Herrera of Med Associates & The University of Vermont show that the Med Associates Video Freeze^® system can be used to effectively score the acoustic startle reflex response in mice.

At first glance, it may seem that the system would not be fast enough to resolve the startle response (occurring in tens of milliseconds) because it uses a video signal acquired at 30 frames per second (fps).  However, using high speed imaging (1,000 fps) to resolve the acoustic startle response with greater temporal resolution, we demonstrated that motion blur occurs during the startle response in Video Freeze^® video captured at 30 fps.  The motion blur allows one to quantify the startle response. The blurrier the video, the greater the startle response.

This lab made a few modifications to their Video Freeze^® setup to accommodate louder sound stimuli than are achievable with a standard setup. If you are interested in learning more about adapting your existing Video Freeze^® setup to examine startle responses in mice, contact us for more information.

Full paper:  “Quantifying the Acoustic Startle Response in Mice Using Standard Digital Video”