Replication of a P50 auditory gating deficit in Australian patients with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenic patients reportedly have a deficit in the control of sensitivity to auditory stimuli as shown by the P50 auditory evoked potential wave in a conditioning-testing paradigm that measures suppression of response to a repeated stimulus. Although this finding has been replicated by several US laboratories, one European group has not found differences between schizophrenic patients and normal control subjects. In the present study, investigators in the Schizophrenia Research Center at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Australia, selected 22 normal control subjects, 11 acutely ill schizophrenic inpatients, and 11 clinically stable schizophrenic outpatients. Both schizophrenic groups were treated with similar doses of classical neuroleptic medications. Evoked potentials were recorded by an investigator from the US laboratory that initially reported the difference; five averages, each the response to 32 stimulus pairs, were recorded from each subject. The normal control subjects demonstrated significantly more suppression of the P50 response to the repeated stimuli than the schizophrenic groups, as previously reported. There were no significant changes in the suppression measure over the five trials. The suppression of the P50 wave by schizophrenic outpatients was somewhat greater than that by schizophrenic inpatients, but both schizophrenic groups had decreased suppression, compared with the normal subjects. The mean P50 suppression for five averages was successfully used in a logistic regression to classify subjects as normal or schizophrenic. This method was more accurate than attempts to classify subjects with only one average. The mean amplitude of the initial conditioning response did not differ between groups. Schizophrenic patients had slightly shorter mean latencies. There was no direct relationship of P50 suppression to measures of clinical psychopathology.