Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Goethe University, Frankfurt Heinrich Hoffmann Straße 10, 60528 Frankfurt, Germany.
Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience (ESI) in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, Deutschordenstraße 46, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Acta Neuropsychiatr. 2022 Dec;34(6):344-353. doi: 10.1017/neu.2022.19. Epub 2022 Aug 12.
Sensorimotor gating is experimentally operationalized by the prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle response (SR). Previous studies suggest high test-retest reliability of PPI and potential correlation with working memory (WM). Here, we aimed to validate and extend the test-retest reliability of PPI in healthy humans and its correlation with WM performance.
We applied an acoustic startle PPI paradigm with four different prepulse intensities (64, 68, 72 and 76 dB) and two different WM tasks [n-back, change detection task (CDT)] in a group of 26 healthy adults (final sample size n = 23). To assess test-retest reliability, we performed all tests on two separate days ~27 days (range: 21-32 days) apart.
We were able to confirm high test-retest reliability of the PPI with a mean intraclass correlation (ICC) of > 0.80 and significant positive correlation of PPI with n-back but not with CDT performance. Detailed analysis showed that PPI across all prepulse intensities significantly correlated with both the 2-back and 0-back conditions, suggesting regulation by cross-conditional processes (e.g. attention). However, when removing the 0-back component from the 2-back data, we found a specific and significant correlation with WM for the 76-dB PPI condition.
With the present study, we were able to confirm the high test-retest reliability of the PPI in humans and could validate and expand on its correlation with WM performance.
感觉运动门控通过惊跳反应（SR）的前脉冲抑制（PPI）来进行实验操作。先前的研究表明 PPI 的测试-重测信度高，并且与工作记忆（WM）有潜在相关性。在这里，我们旨在验证和扩展 PPI 在健康人群中的测试-重测信度及其与 WM 表现的相关性。
我们在一组 26 名健康成年人中应用了一种声学惊跳 PPI 范式，具有四种不同的预脉冲强度（64、68、72 和 76 dB）和两种不同的 WM 任务[n-回，变化检测任务（CDT）]。为了评估测试-重测信度，我们在两天的时间内进行了所有测试，相隔约 27 天（范围：21-32 天）。
我们能够证实 PPI 的测试-重测信度很高，平均组内相关系数（ICC）>0.80，并且 PPI 与 n-回呈显著正相关，但与 CDT 表现无关。详细分析表明，所有预脉冲强度的 PPI 均与 2-回和 0-回条件显著相关，表明存在跨条件过程（例如注意力）的调节。然而，当从 2-回数据中去除 0-回成分时，我们发现 76-dB PPI 条件与 WM 有特定且显著的相关性。
通过本研究，我们能够确认 PPI 在人类中的高测试-重测信度，并能够验证和扩展其与 WM 表现的相关性。
