Event-related potential abnormalities in schizophrenia: A failure to "gate in" salient information?

Sensory gating refers to the central nervous system's ability to filter sensory inputs, and can be measured by comparing the suppression of event-related brain potential (ERP) amplitudes in paired auditory stimulus procedure. Poor gating scores in schizophrenia may be caused by: abnormal responses to the first (SI), the second (S2) or both of the paired stimuli. However since S1 and S2 responses may index separate psychological phenomenon, corresponding to the ability to "gate in" and "gate out" sensory stimuli respectively, the precise mechanism affected in schizophrenia remains unclear. To examine the extent to which saliency processing abnormalities may contribute to SI response deficits, standard and rare (15% probability paired stimuli were presented to 21 participants with schizophrenia and 22 healthy control! P50 and N100 ERP amplitude as well as low, beta and gamma frequency power were measure to examine the time course and relative contributions of oscillatory activity affecting auditor processing in schizophrenia. In this study, schizophrenia patients exhibited less evoked beta power (12-20 Hz) in response to salient stimuli at SI, and lower N100 amplitude in response to all SI stimuli. No group differences were found in the low, beta 2 (20-30 Hz), or gamma frequency ranges. These findings suggest aberrant sensory processing during stages of stimulu evaluation and saliency detection in schizophrenia. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.