Event-Related Potentials During an Auditory Discrimination with Prepulse Inhibition in Patients with Schizophrenia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Healthy Subjects

Abstract

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is a measure of the influence of a stimulus (S1) on the response elicited by a second stimulus (S2) occurring shortly afterwards. Most S1/S2 measures of gating have used behavioural startle and the P50 event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes to detect PPI in a simple paired stimulus paradigm. We report on two behavioural (reaction time, RT, and the electromyographically recorded response of the musculus orbicularis oculi, EMG) and 5 ERP measures of PPI where S2 was the target in an auditory two-tone discrimination. Subjects were 21 healthy controls (CON), 11 obsessive-compulsive (OCD) and 9 schizophrenic patients (SCH). The prepulse 100 ms before S2 induced more omission errors and longer RTs compared to 500ms S1-S2 interval in all subjects. PPI was also evident in EMG, P50, N1, P3 but not P2 or N2 amplitudes of CON subjects. SCH patients showed attenuation of PPI on the same measures. OCD patients were characterized only by their slow RT and a marginal attenuation of PPI of the EMG response. A correlational analysis implied separate relationships of ERP indices of PPI to the cognitive and psychomotor consequences of the prepulse on behavioural and discrimination responses. However, SCH patients showed a general rather than a specific impairment of these indices.

Modulation of the Acoustic Startle Response by the Level of Arousal: Comparison of Clonidine and Modafinil in Healthy Volunteers

“…Presentation of the weak prepulse before the startleeliciting pulse produced significant PPI of the N1/P2 amplitude, in agreement with many previous reports on the N1/P2 component from our laboratory (Abduljawad et al, 1999(Abduljawad et al, , 2001Phillips et al, 2000a, b;Graham et al, 2001Graham et al, , 2002Graham et al, , 2004 and on various AEP components by others (Perlstein et al, 1993(Perlstein et al, , 2001Schall et al, 1996;Bender et al, 1999). None of the treatment conditions had any significant effect on PPI of the AEP (see Figure 3).…”

Oxytocin as a natural antipsychotic: a study using oxytocin knockout mice

“…Several psychiatric and neurological disorders, including schizophrenia, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] obsessive compulsive disorder, 9,10 Huntington's disease 11 and Tourette's syndrome, [12][13][14] show marked deficits in information processing and filtering of stimuli. Specifically, sensorimotor gating, which involves the inhibition of a motor response by the presence of a sensory event, is impaired in these individuals.…”

Associations between prepulse inhibition and executive visual attention in children with the 22q11 deletion syndrome

“…14,15 Lowered PPI has been shown in children with disorders characterized by a failure of brain inhibitory mechanisms including Tourette's syndrome, 16 posttraumatic stress disorder, 17 fragile X syndrome, 18 and among males with nocturnal enuresis and co-morbid ADHD. 19 Lowered PPI has also been found in adults whose psychiatric syndromes are characterized by poor selective-inhibitory control of attention, including obsessive compulsive disorder, 20,21 panic disorder, 22 social phobia, 23 Asperger's syndrome, 24 Huntington's disease, 25 bipolar mania, 26 and schizophrenia. 27 Thus lowered PPI appears to occur among individuals who are subject to unfiltered and irrelevant sensory, cognitive and/or motor perceptions.…”