Sensory Gating: A Translational Effort from Basic to Clinical Science

Abstract

Sensory gating (SG) is a prevalent physiological process important for information filtering in complex systems. SG is evaluated by presenting repetitious stimuli and measuring the degree of neural inhibition that occurs. SG has been found to be impaired in several psychiatric disorders. Recent animal and human research has made great progress in the study of SG, and in this review we provide an overview of recent research on SG using different methods. Animal research has uncovered findings that suggest (1) SG is displayed by single neurons and can be similar to SG observed from scalp recordings in humans, (2) SG is found in numerous brain structures located in sensory, motor and limbic subregions, (3) SG can be significantly influenced by state changes of the organism, and (4) SG has a diverse pharmacological profile accented by a strong influence from nicotine receptor activation. Human research has addressed similar issues using deep electrode recordings of brain structures. These experiments have revealed that (1) SG can be found in cortical regions surrounding hippocampus, (2) the order of neural processing places hippocampal involvement during a later stage of sensory processing than originally thought, and (3) multiple subtypes of gating exist that could be dependent on different brain circuits and more or less influenced by alterations in organismal state. Animal and human research both have limitations. We emphasize the need for integrative approaches to understand the process and combine information between basic and clinical fields so that a more complete picture of SG will emerge.

The Whisker Nuisance Task Identifies a Late-Onset, Persistent Sensory Sensitivity in Diffuse Brain-Injured Rats

“…As noise and error accumulate in a diffuselyinjured neural circuit, information becomes more difficult to extract, such that brain-injured animals become agitated by the seemingly non-noxious whisker stimulation. In this way, the morbidity elicited by the whisker nuisance task resembles the agitation observed in overstimulated brain-injured patients (Waddell and Gronwall, 1984), akin to sensory gating failures in schizophrenia (Cromwell et al, 2008). The defensive freezing (learned helplessness) response could be interpreted as allodynia or neuropathic pain, in which normally innocuous stimuli produce subjective symptomatology (Scholz and Woolf, 2007;Vierck and Light, 2000).…”

Exertional dyspnoea in obesity

“…However, obese adults with DOE could have increased afferent feedback, increased ascending corollary discharge from the respiratory control centre and/or a change in the "respiratory gate" (figure 6) [74,75]. This neural respiratory gate, possibly located at the subcortical level, is thought to be a mechanism to filter out redundant or insignificant respiratory inputs before they reach cortical awareness; only a large enough respiratory stimulus would be consciously perceived by the individual [76]. The threshold for generating awareness of respiratory stimuli can be influenced by modifiers, such as current mood state, negative emotions and/or prior experiences, thus controlling whether consciousness is obtained, inhibited or habituated (figure 6) [75,[77][78][79].…”

Multistability in auditory stream segregation: a predictive coding view

“…Such early binding processes may operate, for instance, based on SSA [12,13] or other refractoriness-related mechanisms [44]. The notion that grouping and selection are based on featural proximity has been introduced to psychology by early filtering theories of selective attention [45] and is also implicitly invoked by the neurophysiological assumption of sensory gating [46].…”