Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 161, 15 October 2021, 107989
Neuropsychologia

Sensory gating is related to positive and disorganised schizotypy in contrast to smooth pursuit eye movements and latent inhibition

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107989Get rights and content

Highlights

  • P50 sensory gating related to all dimensions of schizotypy.

  • SPEM correlates with negative and disorganised dimensions of schizotypy.

  • Prepulse inhibition unrelated to schizotypy.

  • P300 deviance detection related to disorganised dimension of schizotypy.

  • Different endophenotypes of schizotypy are related to different symptom clusters.

Abstract

Since the characteristics and symptoms of both schizophrenia and schizotypy are manifested heterogeneously, it is possible that different endophenotypes and neurophysiological measures (sensory gating and smooth pursuit eye movement errors) represent different clusters of symptoms. Participants (N = 205) underwent a standard conditioned-pairing paradigm to establish their sensory gating ratio, a smooth-pursuit eye-movement task, a latent inhibition task, and completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire. A Multidimensional Scaling analysis revealed that sensory gating was related to positive and disorganised dimensions of schizotypy. Latent inhibition and prepulse inhibition were not related to any dimension of schizotypy. Smooth pursuit eye movement error was unrelated to sensory gating and latent inhibition, but was related to negative dimensions of schizotypy. Our findings suggest that the symptom clusters associated with two main endophenotypes are largely independent. To fully understand symptomology and outcomes of schizotypal traits, the different subtypes of schizotypy (and potentially, schizophrenia) ought to be considered separately rather than together.

Section snippets

Sensory gating

Sensory gating is a neurophysiological measure of attention and information processing observed during electroencephalographic (EEG) recording (Cadenhead et al., 2000). Sensory gating is characterised by attenuation of the event-related potential (ERP) P50 by 9–73% upon repetition of an identical auditory stimulus in healthy controls (Cadenhead et al., 2000; Croft et al., 2001; Park et al., 2015; Wan et al., 2007). Sensory gating relates to the attenuation of redundant sensory information for

Participants

An opportunity sample of 205 participants (130 female, 69 male, and 6 undisclosed, mean age = 24.04 years, SD = 7.88 years, range = 18–68 years; 158 were studying for an undergraduate or master's degree, 6 were studying for PhDs, the remainder did not have degrees) were recruited from Bournemouth from those who responded to an advert. We did not analyse the results by educational level as previous work has indicated no relationship between age, nor educational level and sensory gating (Lijffijt

Results

The mean score on the SPQ was 32.22 (SD = 21.81, see Table 1). This was comparable to other published studies using this questionnaire, though on the high side: M = 26.9, SD = 11.0 (Raine, 1991); M = 27.34, SD = 12.41 (Smyrnis et al., 2007a, Smyrnis et al., 2007b); M = 30.00, SD = 9.68 (Wuthrich and Bates, 2006). We ran two separate analysis protocols. Firstly, we ran correlations summarised in Table 2: We used a hierarchical approach to this analysis, first correlating each neurophysiological

Discussion

We attempted to explore four endophenotypes of schizotypy, latent inhibition, and how they relate to different clusters of symptoms. We explored sensory gating, thought to represent pre-conscious attention and information processing (Cadenhead et al., 2000), smooth pursuit eye movements, thought to measure visual motion processing, attention, working memory, and oculomotor inhibition (the ability to inhibit eye movements, Siever and Davis, 2004), prepulse inhibition, thought to measure the

Credit author statement

Peter J Hills – Conceptualisation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Resources, Writing, Supervision, Project administration; Martin R Vasilev – Formal analysis, Software, Writing – review & editing; Panarai Ford – Investigation, Writing – original draft; Lucy Snell – Investigation, Writing – original draft; Emma Whitworth – Conceptualisation, Investigation, Writing – original draft; Tessa Parsons – Investigation, Writing – original draft; Rebecca Morisson – Investigation, Writing –

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Matt Green for technical assistance in the set-up of the eye-trackers and EEG equipment. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. This work was conducted between 2015 and 2016 and between 2019 and 2020.

References (146)

  • M.T. Compton et al.

    Confirmation of a four-factor structure of the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire among undergraduate students

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2009)
  • R.J. Croft et al.

    Suppression of P50 evoked potential component, schizotypal beliefs and smoking

    Psychiatr. Res.

    (2004)
  • R.J. Croft et al.

    Associations of P50 suppression and desensitization with perceptual and cognitive features of “unreality” in schizotypy

    Biol. Psychiatr.

    (2001)
  • H. Darwin et al.

    Belief in conspiracy theories. The role of paranormal belief, paranoid ideation and schizotypy

    Pers. Indiv. Differ.

    (2011)
  • W. Dinn et al.

    Positive and negative schizotypy in a student sample: neurocognitive and clinical correlates

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2002)
  • A.C. Ehlis et al.

    Cortical correlates of auditory sensory gating: a simultaneous near-infrared spectroscopy event-related potential study

    Neuroscience

    (2009)
  • L.H. Evans et al.

    Reduced P50 suppression is associated with the cognitive disorganisation dimension of schizotypy

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2007)
  • D.J. Fisher et al.

    Attenuation of mismatch negativity (MMN) and novelty P300 in schizophrenia patients with auditory hallucinations experiencing acute exacerbation of illness

    Biol. Psychol.

    (2014)
  • A.M. Gagné et al.

    Revisiting visual dysfunctions in schizophrenia from the retina to the cortical cells: a manifestation of defective neurodevelopment

    Prog. Neuro Psychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatr.

    (2015)
  • J. Gallinat et al.

    Association of the G1947A COMT (Val 108/158 Met) gene polymorphism with prefrontal P300 during information processing

    Biol. Psychiatr.

    (2003)
  • K. Gjini et al.

    Relationships between sensory “gating out” and sensory “gating in” of auditory evoked potentials in schizophrenia: a pilot study

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2010)
  • D.C. Gooding et al.

    Smooth pursuit eye tracking and visual fixation in psychosis-prone individuals

    Psychiatr. Res.

    (2000)
  • K.T. Granger et al.

    Enhanced latent inhibition in high schizotypy individuals

    Pers. Indiv. Differ.

    (2016)
  • K.T. Granger et al.

    Disruption of overshadowing and latent inhibition in high schizotypy individuals

    Behav. Brain Res.

    (2012)
  • P.J. Harrison et al.

    Genes for schizophrenia? Recent findings and their pathophysiological implications

    Lancet

    (2003)
  • W. Hasenkamp et al.

    Heritability of acoustic startle magnitude, prepulse inhibition, and startle latency in schizophrenia and control families

    Psychiatr. Res.

    (2010)
  • E.A. Hazlett et al.

    Sensory gating disturbances in the spectrum: similarities and differences in schizotypal personality disorder and schizophrenia

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2015)
  • M. Higashima et al.

    Auditory P300 amplitude as a state marker for positive symptoms in schizophrenia: cross-sectional and retrospective longitudinal studies

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2003)
  • A.L.V. Holahan et al.

    Antisaccade and smooth pursuit performance in positive-and negative-symptom schizotypy

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2005)
  • L.A. Jones et al.

    Cognitive mechanisms associated with auditory sensory gating

    Brain Cognit.

    (2016)
  • S. Kapur et al.

    Fromdopamine to salience to psychosis—linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2005)
  • M. Kim et al.

    Decomposing P300 into correlates of genetic risk and current symptoms in schizophrenia: an inter-trial variability analysis

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2018)
  • T.R. Kwapil et al.

    Development and psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Schizotypy Scale: a new measure for assessing positive, negative, and disorganized schizotypy

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2018)
  • K. Lee et al.

    Syndromes of schizophrenia and smooth-pursuit eye movement dysfunction

    Psychiatr. Res.

    (2001)
  • R. Lencer et al.

    Sensorimotor transformation deficits for smooth pursuit in first-episode affective psychoses and schizophrenia

    Biol. Psychiatr.

    (2010)
  • R. Lencer et al.

    Pursuit eye movements as an intermediate phenotype across psychotic disorders: evidence from the B-SNIP study

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2015)
  • R. Lencer et al.

    Schizophrenia spectrum disorders and eye tracking dysfunction in singleton and multiplex schizophrenia families

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2003)
  • C.H. Lin et al.

    Clinical symptoms, mainly negative symptoms, mediate the influence of neurocognition and social cognition on functional outcome of schizophrenia

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2013)
  • O.V. Lipp et al.

    Psychosis proneness in a non-clinical sample II: a multi-experimental study of “attentional malfunctioning”

    Pers. Indiv. Differ.

    (1994)
  • S. Louchart-de la Chapelle et al.

    P50 inhibitory gating deficit is correlated with the negative symptomatology of schizophrenia

    Psychiatr. Res.

    (2005)
  • R.E. Lubow et al.

    Performance on the visual search analog of latent inhibition is modulated by an interaction between schizotypy and gender

    Schizophr. Res.

    (2001)
  • K.M. Abel et al.

    The influence of schizotypy traits on prepulse inhibition in young healthy controls

    J. Psychopharmacol.

    (2004)
  • J. Addington et al.

    North American prodrome longitudinal study (NAPLS 2): the prodromal symptoms

    J. Nerv. Ment. Dis.

    (2015)
  • Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV

    (1994)
  • Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-V

    (2013)
  • M.T. Avila et al.

    Role of anticipation in schizophrenia-related pursuit initiation deficits

    J. Neurophysiol.

    (2006)
  • D. Braff et al.

    Endophenotyping schizophrenia

    Am. J. Psychiatr.

    (2007)
  • D.L. Braff et al.

    Prestimulus effects on human startle reflex in normals and schizophrenics

    Psychophysiology

    (1978)
  • D.L. Braff et al.

    Symptom correlates of prepulse inhibition deficits in male schizophrenic patients

    Am. J. Psychiatr.

    (1999)
  • K.S. Cadenhead et al.

    Sensory gating deficits assessed by the P50 event-related potential in subjects with schizotypal personality disorder

    Am. J. Psychiatr.

    (2000)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text