• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.410-414
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• 2013

As one of the effective methods for researching the objective tinnitus detection, the GPIAS (Gap Pre-pulse Inhibition of Acoustic Startle) measurement has been used to verify the existence of animal tinnitus objectively. The level and pattern of the background sound presented prior to a startle pulse are closely related with the GPIAS results. But the effect of the starting point of the background sound on animal startle responses has not been reported yet. In this paper, we present the implementation of a GPIAS measurement system based on an unconstrained enclosure to avoid animals' excessive constraint stress and deal with the animals' growth. After the performance of our implemented system has been tested through the animal experiment using 4 SD-rats, the effect of starting point of stimulus background sound on the startle response has been studied by the use of our implemented system. Through the results, it is verified that our system can measure the inhibition of animal startle responses due the gap pre-pulse for GPIAS calculation and the background sound starting point does not significantly effect on the startle response and the GPIAS values if the background sound continues for more than 300msec before a gap pre-pulse is presented.