Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle response is a measurement of sensorimotor gating.Major depression disorder (MDD) patients are characterized by clinical gating deficits as they failed to filter intrusive negative thoughts.Apart from disease, race has influence to sensorimotor gating.Therefore, we assessed PPI in Chinese MDD patients and compared with healthy controls.We assessed startle response, habituation, peak startle latency and PPI data of 40 Chinese MDD patients and 42 controls.MDD patients had PPI and ASR levels that were significantly lower than healthy control subjects.But peak startle latency and habituation were not significantly different between the two groups.Most of the participants in patient group were treated with antidepressants, and the effect of SSRI or SNRI antidepressant medications could not be ignored.Our results clearly show that Chinese MDD patients have PPI deficits when compared with healthy controls.As far as we know, this is the first study to demonstrate PPI deficits in Asian MDD patients.