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BMC Psychiatry
Published in: BMC Psychiatry 1/2017

Open Access 01-12-2017 | Research article

Deficits of perceived spatial separation induced prepulse inhibition in patients with schizophrenia: relationships to symptoms and neurocognition

Authors: Ning-Bo Yang, Qing Tian, Yu Fan, Qi-Jing Bo, Liang Zhang, Liang Li, Chuan-Yue Wang

Published in: BMC Psychiatry | Issue 1/2017

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Abstract

Background

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) and attention were impaired, which may cause psychotic symptoms and (or) hinder the cognitive functions in schizophrenia. However, due to the measurement methods of PPI, findings about the relationship between PPI and clinical symptoms, cognitive performances have been equivocal.

Methods

Seventy-five schizophrenia patients (SZ) and 50 healthy controls (HC) were assessed in a modified acoustic PPI paradigm, named perceived spatial separation-induced PPI (PSS-PPI), compared to perceived spatial co-location PPI (PSC-PPI) with inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 120 ms. Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status and the Stroop Color-Word Test were administered to all subjects.

Results

Significant decrease in the modified PPI was found in the patients as compared to the controls, and effect sizes (Cohen’d) for patients vs. HCs % PPI levels achieved a significant level (PSC-PPI d = 0.84, PSS-PPI d = 1.27). A logistic regression model based on PSS-PPI significantly represented the diagnostic grouping (χ2 = 29.3; p < 0 .001), with 85.2% area under ROC curve in predicting group membership.
In addition, patients exhibited deficits in neurocognition. Among patients of “non-remission”, after controlling for gender, age, education, duration, recurrence times, onset age, cigarettes per day and chlorpromazine equivalent dosage, PSS-PPI levels were associated with positive and negative symptoms, PANSS total and thought disorder (P1, P6, P7, N5, N7, G9). In multiple linear regression analyses, male and higher attention scores contributed to better PSC-PPI and PSS-PPI in controls group, while larger amount of smoke and longer word-color interfere time contributed to poor PSS-PPI. In patients’ group, higher education and attention scores contributed to better PSS-PPI, while repeated relapse contributed to poor PSS-PPI.

Conclusions

The acoustic perceived spatial separation-induced PPIs may bring to light the psychopathological symptoms, especially for thought disorder, and the mechanism(s) of the novel PPI paradigm was associated with attention function.
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Metadata
Title
Deficits of perceived spatial separation induced prepulse inhibition in patients with schizophrenia: relationships to symptoms and neurocognition
Authors
Ning-Bo Yang
Qing Tian
Yu Fan
Qi-Jing Bo
Liang Zhang
Liang Li
Chuan-Yue Wang
Publication date
01-12-2017
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Psychiatry / Issue 1/2017
Electronic ISSN: 1471-244X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1276-4

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