Boo! Culture, Experience, and the Startle Reflex

• Written in a concise and non-technical style
• Provides a model for discovering how evolved neurophysiology shapes personal experience

Readership: Psychologists, psychiatrists, cultural anthropologists, and interested laypersons.

Ronald C. Simons, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Michigan State University, East Lansing

Part I: Startle and Hyperstartle
Introduction
1: Startle as a Personal Experience and as a Social Resource
2: Making People Jumpy: Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn Create a Hyperstartler
3: Variations on a Theme: Being Startled Makes One Ill
4: The Startle Museum I: Exhibits of Startle Sorted by their Expository Uses
5: The Startle Museum II: Exhibits of Startle Sorted by Properties of Startle Events
Part II: Latah and Other Startle-Matching Syndromes
6: Attention Capture and the Startle-Matching Syndromes
7: Latah: The Paradigmatic Startle-Matching Syndrome
8: Explaining Latah: The Importance of Descriptive Detail
9: The Startle-Matching Syndrome in Other Cultures
10: Culture, Biology, and Individual Experience