Early information processing in schizophrenia.

In summary, approaches from various sensory modalities indicate a similar processing deficit for various schizophrenics occurring at approximately 100 milliseconds during or post-stimulus presentation. This deficit occurs during the time period that has been associated with a dysfunctional inhibitory mechanism that is maximally activated during the 100 millisecond time period (e.g., during the period of temporal integration). The inhibitory mechanism is presently conceptualized as being a "transient" or "fast" system involved in the serial/sequential processing of information. The inability of certain schizophrenics to serially process may suggest a dysfunctional inhibitory mechanism for which GABA is a potential candidate.