Although patients with schizophrenia exhibit impaired suppression of the P50 event-related brain potential in response to the second of two identical auditory stimuli during a paired-stimulus paradigm, uncertainty remains over whether this deficit in inhibitory gating of auditory sensory processes has relevance for patients’ clinical symptoms or cognitive performance. The authors examined associations between P50 suppression deficits and several core features of schizophrenia to address this gap.

P50 was recorded from 52 patients with schizophrenia and 41 healthy comparison subjects during a standard auditory paired-stimulus task. Clinical symptoms were assessed with the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms. The MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery was utilized to measure cognitive performance in a subsample of 39 patients. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to examine P50 suppression in relation to clinical symptom and cognitive performance measures.

Schizophrenia patients demonstrated a deficit in P50 suppression when compared with healthy subjects, replicating prior research. Within the patient sample, impaired P50 suppression covaried reliably with greater difficulties in attention, poorer working memory, and reduced processing speed.

Impaired suppression of auditory stimuli was associated with core pathological features of schizophrenia, increasing confidence that P50 inhibitory processing can inform the development of interventions that target cognitive impairments in this chronic and debilitating mental illness.

尽管在配对刺激范例中，精神分裂症患者对两个相同的听觉刺激中的第二个表现出对P50事件相关的脑电势的抑制作用减弱，但这种抑制听觉感觉过程的门控功能是否与患者的相关性仍存在不确定性临床症状或认知表现。作者研究了P50抑制缺陷与精神分裂症的几个核心特征之间的关联，以解决这一差距。

在标准的听觉配对刺激任务中，从52位精神分裂症患者和41位健康对照受试者中记录了P50。临床症状通过阳性症状评估量表和阴性症状评估量表进行评估。MATRICS共识认知电池用于测量39名患者的子样本中的认知表现。进行了相关和回归分析，以检查P50抑制与临床症状和认知表现的相关性。

与健康受试者相比，精神分裂症患者表现出P50抑制的不足，重复了先前的研究。在患者样本中，受损的P50抑制可靠地协变，从而引起注意上的更大困难，较差的工作记忆和降低的处理速度。

听觉刺激抑制能力的降低与精神分裂症的核心病理特征有关，从而增强了人们的信心，即P50抑制过程可以指导针对这种慢性和使人衰弱的精神疾病的认知障碍的干预措施的发展。