Swerdlow N R, Braff D L, Geyer M A, Koob G F
Biol Psychiatry. 1986 Jan;21(1):23-33. doi: 10.1016/0006-3223(86)90005-3.
Schizophrenic patients show loss of the normal inhibition of the acoustic startle response (ASR) when the startle stimulus is preceded by a weak prepulse stimulus. In rats experimentally induced to have locally supersensitive dopamine receptors within forebrain dopamine terminal regions, we find a similar deficit in "prepulse inhibition" of the ASR. Our results suggest that there are intriguing parallels between the aberrant sensory gating of the ASR demonstrated by schizophrenics and that demonstrated by rats during stimulation of supersensitive brain dopamine receptors. Thus, prepulse inhibition of the ASR provides a useful paradigm for investigating the bridge between mesolimbic dopamine overactivity and the specific time-dependent information processing-sensory gating disturbances that have been identified in schizophrenic patients.
精神分裂症患者在惊吓刺激之前出现微弱的预脉冲刺激时，会表现出对听觉惊吓反应（ASR）的正常抑制作用丧失。在实验诱导前脑多巴胺终端区域局部多巴胺受体超敏的大鼠中，我们发现ASR的“预脉冲抑制”存在类似缺陷。我们的结果表明，精神分裂症患者所表现出的ASR异常感觉门控与刺激超敏脑多巴胺受体时大鼠所表现出的异常感觉门控之间存在有趣的相似之处。因此，ASR的预脉冲抑制为研究中脑边缘多巴胺活性过高与精神分裂症患者中已确定的特定时间依赖性信息处理——感觉门控障碍之间的联系提供了一个有用的范例。
