Original articlePrepulse facilitation and prepulse inhibition in schizophrenia patients and their unaffected siblings
Section snippets
Participants
Participants initially included 90 schizophrenia patients, 48 of their siblings (sharing both biological parents of the schizophrenia proband), and 47 nonpatient control subjects. Subjects were drawn from a larger study of Early Visual Processing in Schizophrenia (principal investigator: M.F. Green); schizophrenia probands were recruited from outpatient clinics at the Greater Los Angeles Veteran's Administration (VA) Healthcare System and through presentations in the community. Nonpatient
Subject exclusions
Before any statistical analysis, subjects with blink amplitudes less than an average of 2.0 μV to startle-alone trials (based on the average of all 15 ITI startle-alone trials) were considered nonresponders and were excluded from further analysis (14 patients, 7 siblings, and 6 control subjects met this criterion). The following number of subjects comprised each group after exclusions: 76 (2 female) patients, 36 (19 female) siblings, and 41 (22 female) normal control subjects.
Demographic data
Descriptive data
Discussion
The three major findings of this paper are the following: 1) deficient PPF was found in schizophrenia patients and their siblings; 2) intact PPI was found in schizophrenia patients and their siblings, a finding contrary to many published studies finding PPI deficits in such groups; and 3) these findings were obtained regardless of the duration of the prepulse (i.e., discrete white noise vs. continuous tone).
The principal new finding of this study was the deficient PPF exhibited by both
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Grant Nos. MH-46433 (MED) and MH-43292 (MFG) and by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Integrated Services Network 22 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center. JKW was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health National Research Service Award Training Grant No. MH14584 (principal investigator: Keith H. Nuechterlein) during preparation of this article. We thank Bill Troyer for technical assistance and programming.
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2016, Physiology and BehaviorCitation Excerpt :Even though the startle response represents a seemingly unalterable reflex reaction, there are several circumstances that may modulate its intensity, either by intensifying or reducing the reflex response. Thus, for example, the startle reflex increases when a sensitization process (e.g., [56]) or a prepulse facilitation process (e.g., [86]) is induced. Conversely, a reduced response is observed after stimulus habituation (e.g., [58] or prepulse inhibition (e.g., ([25,38]).