Preliminary evidence of an association between sensorimotor gating and distractibility in psychosis

Impaired sensory gating and increased distractibility are key information-processing deficits in schizophrenia. This study evaluated the hypothesis that distractibility is related to reduced sensory gating. Performance on vigilance and distractibility tasks was compared to prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle reflex in 28 stable chronic psychotic patients. PPI significantly correlated with distractibility task score on a continuous performance test and lateralized attention on the Posner test. These results suggest that performance on tests of distractibility and lateralized attention are related to a measure of sensory gating.