Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is a phenomenon whereby a startle reflex in response to an intense acoustic stimulus is suppressed when a weak pulse precedes the startle stimulus by 30-500 milliseconds. PPI is an automatic early-stage gating process contributing to the ability to focus attention, which is disrupted in several neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia. Sensorimotor gating reflects brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli (i.e., in this case, weak pulse) and prevent them from overwhelming the processing of more important stimuli (i.e., in this case, intense acoustic stimulus) 

Sensorimotor gating deficits are detectable in mice lacking Pcdh9 (Bruining et al 2015), different recombinant inbred strains (Loos et al. 2012) and in the 22q11 mouse model relevant to study Schizophrenia.