The startle reflex in schizophrenia: habituation and personality correlates

Abstract

Schizophrenia has long been associated with abnormal patterns of arousal that are thought to reflect disturbances in the reticular-activating system of the brain. Psychophysiological investigations of sensory responsivity have repeatedly demonstrated reduced reactivity and habituation to moderately intense stimuli in patients with schizophrenia. While not traditionally used as a measure of physiological arousal, the startle reflex represents an alternative method for studying reactivity and habituation in schizophrenia. This study examined eye blink responsivity to a repeatedly presented intense acoustic startle probe in men with chronic schizophrenia and healthy normal controls. Subjects' personality profiles were also measured, as increased reactivity and arousal have been traditionally implicated as a physiological component to the personality trait of neuroticism. Results indicated that schizophrenic subjects did demonstrate significantly reduced rates of habituation to the acoustic startle probe and higher scores on measures of neuroticism in comparison to normal controls. However, no correlation between habituation rate and neuroticism emerged. These studies replicate previous findings of habituation in schizophrenia and provide further evidence for sensory reactivity disturbances in schizophrenia. The relationship of these findings to cognitive disturbances in schizophrenia is considered and directions for future research are discussed.

The HIV-1 transgenic rat model of neuroHIV

“…Reduced habituation is correlated with several neurodegenerative disorders, including chronic schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder. Such disturbances in habituation reflect cognitive deficits (e.g., pre-attentional and attentional processes) that contribute to the neurocognitive symptoms of the correlated neurodegenerative disorders (Akdag, Nestor et al 2003). …”

Does Neuroticism in Adolescents Moderate Contextual and Explicit Threat Cue Modulation of the Startle Reflex?

“…N is sometimes called “negative affectivity” (15) and is a trait disposition to experience negative emotions across a variety of situations (16,15). There are no studies of SR modulation to contextual or explicit threat cues as a function of N. Extant studies of N are limited to affect modulation paradigms that use emotion-arousing film clips (17) and evaluation of SR in the absence of aversive stimuli (18). If patterns of SR modulation to contextual or explicit threat cues as a function of N parallel the findings as a function of familial anxiety and depression (8), then SR modulation may represent an observable indicator of a shared mechanism underlying these two risk factors for anxiety and depressive disorders.…”

Examining habituation of the startle reflex with the reinforcement sensitivity theory of personality

“…However, other past research about the relationship of individual differences in personality with habituation to the ASR have garnered mixed evidence concerning the association of personality with the habituation of the ASR (Akdag et al, ; Blanch et al, ; LaRowe et al, ; Martin‐Soelch et al, ). These inconsistencies might be due to the multiplicity of self‐report measures employed, the application of other more common data analyses techniques different from the LCM, or to the lack of explicit theoretically driven predictions about the relationship of personality with psychophysiological processes.…”

“…The habituation of the ASR relates also with individual differences in personality, with a faster response habituation for higher scorers in self‐reported extraversion, sensation seeking, and neuroticism, and a slower response habituation for higher scorers in self‐reported aggressiveness (Blanch, Balada, & Aluja, ; LaRowe, Patrick, Curtin, & Kline, ). However, some studies also report that neuroticism or trait anxiety bears no associations with ASR habituation (Akdag et al, ; Martin‐Soelch, Stöcklin, Dammann, Opwis, & Seifritz, ).…”