Prepulse Inhibition of Acoustic Startle and Cognitive Functioning in Subjects with Schizophrenia

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Both cognitive deficits and deficient prepulse inhibition(PPI) of the startle eyeblink reflex which is thought to reflect an early stage of information processing have found to be prevalent in schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to examine whether cognitive functions and PPI correlate in a schizophrenia sample. Fifty patients who met DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia and 50 healthy controls were included in this study. Cognitive functions were assessed using tests from the Cambridge Neuropyschological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). Inhibition of the acoustic startle response was assessed in the subjects. The pulse-alone stimulus was a 116-dB tone and the prepulse stimuli were 85-dB tone presented 30, 60, and 120 ms prior to the startle stimulus. Patients with schizophrenia committed more errors overall (p=0.045) on the CANTAB Intara-Extra-Dimensional Set Shifting task than the normal controls. Patients with schizophrenia had a tendency towards lower strategy scores (p=0.069) on the CANTAB Spatial Working Memory task. There were no significant differences between patients and controls in other cognitive tasks. These results suggest that patients with schizophrenia have deficits affecting cognitive domains such as working memory and visual memory. An ANOVA revealed no significant difference in PPI between patients and controls. Negative findings of this PPI result can provide no conclusion regarding whether cognitive dysfunctionsare related to the PPI impairment in schizophrenia.