The authors investigated preattentive filtering assessed by P50 gating in nine participants with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and seven with adult-onset antisocial behavior (AAB). Relative to 15 comparison subjects, gating was impaired in ASPD, suggesting abnormal pre-attentive filtering in pathological impulsivity.Repetition-induced reduction in P50 amplitude (P50 gating) could reflect a preattentive mechanism that filters out irrelevant information, affecting cognitive and motor processes and task performance. 1,2 Strong evidence exists that P50 gating is impaired in psychosis-related disorders, such as schizophrenia, 3 and anxiety/stress-related disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder. 4 Although not addressed directly, recent findings also suggest weaker gating in disorders associated with pathological impulsivity, including alcohol abuse, 5-7 substance abuse, 5,8,9 adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 10 bipolar disorder without psychosis, 11 and violence in schizophrenia, 1 even though in most of these studies results may be affected by overlap with psychosis-or anxiety-related disorders. Interestingly, Thoma et al. 7 showed that subjects with combined alcohol abuse disorder and schizophrenia had more severely impaired P50 gating than either disorder alone, suggesting partially independent mechanisms.Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a disorder of pathological impulsivity without psychosis or anxiety. True ASPD, with childhood onset of antisocial behavior, differs in clinical characteristics from adolescent-or adult-onset antisocial behavior (AAB) by being associated with more pervasive sociodevelopmental, cognitive, and behavioral disturbances. 12 pilot study we investigated the relationship between P50 gating and pathological impulsivity directly in ASPD and AAB patients without past or current psychosis-or anxiety-related disorders. We expected impaired P50 gating in subjects with antisocial behavior relative to healthy comparison subjects.
Methods
ParticipantsAll subjects were recruited from the general population through advertisements. Participants completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV axis I and axis II disorders (SCID-I and SCID-II). 13 Participants with antisocial behavior met criteria for ASPD or AAB. Healthy comparison subjects were required to have no current or past axis I or axis II disorders and to have no first-degree relatives with axis I or II disorders. Further criteria were age between 18 and 55 years old, hearing at least 60 dB, (corrected-to-) normal vision, no head trauma or epilepsy, and no current use of psychoactive medicine. Participants signed informed consent before participation. The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects institutional review board for the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.There were sixteen antisocial patients (mean age=34.50 years, SD=9.16) of whom three were female; the group included nin...