Abstract
Schizotypy is a personality dimension within the general population elevated among schizophrenia-spectrum patients and their first-degree relatives. Sensory gating is the pre-attentional habituation of responses distinguishing between important and irrelevant information. This is measured by event-related potentials, which have been found to display abnormalities in schizophrenic disorders. The current study investigated whether 6-month-old infants of mothers with schizotypic traits display sensory gating abnormalities. The paired-tone paradigm: two identical auditory tones (stimulus 1 and stimulus 2) played 500 ms apart, was used to probe the selective activation of the brain during 15-minutes of sleep. Their mothers completed the Oxford and Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences-Short Form as an index of schizotypy dimensionality, categorized into: infants of control, and infants of schizotypic, mothers. The findings revealed that although the infants’ P50 components displayed significant differences between stimulus 1 and stimulus 2 in the paired-tone paradigm, there was no clear difference between infants of schizotypic and infants of control mothers. In contrast, all mothers displayed significant differences between stimulus 1 and stimulus 2, as observed in the infants, but also significant differences between their sensory gating ability correlated with schizotypy dimensionality. These findings are consistent with sensory processes, such as sensory gating, evidencing impairment in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. The present research supports the idea that first-degree relatives of individuals who identify on this spectrum, within the sub-clinical category, do not display the same deficit at 6 postnatal months of age.
Highlights
The influence of maternal personality on childhood risk factors for mental health is widely acknowledged with links identified between specific parental psychopathology and event-related potential (ERP) components
Significant differences were observed in P50 amplitudes between the central, right-temporal, and left-temporal regions (F(2,66) = 12.467, p > 0.001, η2 = 0.274)
To explore the differences between P50 amplitudes further, a paired-samples t test demonstrated a significant difference between stimulus 1 (S1) and stimulus 2 (S2) in the central region when examined using the maximum amplitude (t(34) = 2.062, p = 0.047) measure (Fig. 4)
Summary
The influence of maternal personality on childhood risk factors for mental health is widely acknowledged with links identified between specific parental psychopathology and event-related potential (ERP) components. Atypical P50 sensory gating is a highly established biological trait of schizophrenia (Raine 2006), observed in individuals with schizotypal personality disorder (Cadenhead et al 2000) and infants and children of parents with psychoses, or severe anxiety disorders (Ross and Freedman 2015). Atypical sensory gating shows potential as a candidate endophenotype because the same deficit is observed in non-affected first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients (Waldo et al 2000), individuals at-risk of development (Cadenhead et al 2005), and in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (Raine 2006; Cadenhead et al 2000). It was hypothesised that the infants of mothers displaying schizotypic traits would exhibit these atypicalities; to the manner in which first-degree relatives of those diagnosed with schizophrenia display sensory gating abnormalities. We evaluated whether the 6-month-old infants of schizotypic mothers display smaller differences and larger suppression ratios in the P50 component when explored using the paired-tone paradigm
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