A Pilot Study Revealing Impaired P50 Gating in Antisocial Personality Disorder

Abstract

The authors investigated preattentive filtering assessed by P50 gating in nine participants with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and seven with adult-onset antisocial behavior (AAB). Relative to 15 comparison subjects, gating was impaired in ASPD, suggesting abnormal pre-attentive filtering in pathological impulsivity.Repetition-induced reduction in P50 amplitude (P50 gating) could reflect a preattentive mechanism that filters out irrelevant information, affecting cognitive and motor processes and task performance. 1,2 Strong evidence exists that P50 gating is impaired in psychosis-related disorders, such as schizophrenia, 3 and anxiety/stress-related disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder. 4 Although not addressed directly, recent findings also suggest weaker gating in disorders associated with pathological impulsivity, including alcohol abuse, 5-7 substance abuse, 5,8,9 adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 10 bipolar disorder without psychosis, 11 and violence in schizophrenia, 1 even though in most of these studies results may be affected by overlap with psychosis-or anxiety-related disorders. Interestingly, Thoma et al. 7 showed that subjects with combined alcohol abuse disorder and schizophrenia had more severely impaired P50 gating than either disorder alone, suggesting partially independent mechanisms.Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is a disorder of pathological impulsivity without psychosis or anxiety. True ASPD, with childhood onset of antisocial behavior, differs in clinical characteristics from adolescent-or adult-onset antisocial behavior (AAB) by being associated with more pervasive sociodevelopmental, cognitive, and behavioral disturbances. 12 pilot study we investigated the relationship between P50 gating and pathological impulsivity directly in ASPD and AAB patients without past or current psychosis-or anxiety-related disorders. We expected impaired P50 gating in subjects with antisocial behavior relative to healthy comparison subjects. Methods ParticipantsAll subjects were recruited from the general population through advertisements. Participants completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV axis I and axis II disorders (SCID-I and SCID-II). 13 Participants with antisocial behavior met criteria for ASPD or AAB. Healthy comparison subjects were required to have no current or past axis I or axis II disorders and to have no first-degree relatives with axis I or II disorders. Further criteria were age between 18 and 55 years old, hearing at least 60 dB, (corrected-to-) normal vision, no head trauma or epilepsy, and no current use of psychoactive medicine. Participants signed informed consent before participation. The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects institutional review board for the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.There were sixteen antisocial patients (mean age=34.50 years, SD=9.16) of whom three were female; the group included nin...

Differential relationships of impulsivity or antisocial symptoms on P50, N100, or P200 auditory sensory gating in controls and antisocial personality disorder

“…Preliminary results showed later P50 peak latencies and reduced P50 ASG in subjects with ASPD, but not in subjects with adult-onset antisocial behavior, compared to controls (Lijffijt et al, 2009). There was also a trend for a more pronounced P50 ASG impairment in subjects endorsing more conduct disorder symptoms, similar to relationships between ASPD symptoms and changes in evoked potentials reflecting higher-order mechanisms (Bauer, 2001; Chang et al, 2010).…”

“…Analyses were limited to males because only 4 women with ASPD completed electrophysiological testing. Groups in this paper differed from our previous paper (Lijffijt et al, 2009): to increase sample size and generalizability controls were now allowed to have first-degree relatives with a psychiatric disorder (26 ASPD, 11 controls; no report: 4 ASPD, 6 controls), and to endorse ASPD symptoms without meeting full childhood or adulthood criteria. Six subjects with ASPD and 7 controls were in both studies.…”

The Role of Age, Gender, Education, and Intelligence in P50, N100, and P200 Auditory Sensory Gating

“…Previous studies showed P50 gating impairments in subjects with Alzheimer dementia (Thomas et al, in press), childhood-onset antisocial personality disorder (Lijffijt, Moeller, Boutros, Burroughs, et al, in press), posttraumatic stress disorder (Karl, Malta, & Maercker, 2006), panic disorder (Ghisolfi et al, 2006), schizotypal personality disorder (Cadenhead, Light, Geyer, & Braff, 2000; Wan, Crawford, & Boutros, 2007; Wang, Miyazato, Hokama, Hiramatsu, & Kondo, 2004), cocaine abuse (Boutros, Gooding, Sundaresan, Burroughs, & Johanson, 2006; Fein, Biggins, & MacKay, 1996), schizophrenia (Bramon, Rabe-Hesketh, Sham, Murray, & Frangou, 2004; Brockhaus-Dumke, Schultze-Lutter et al, 2008; De Wilde, Bour, Dingemans, Koelman, & Linszen, 2007; Patterson et al, 2008), and bipolar I disorder (Lijffijt, Moeller, Boutros, Steinberg, et al, in press; Olincy& Martin, 2005; Schulze et al, 2007), suggesting a common underlying filter deficit across a wide range of disorders.…”

Resting EEG deficits in accused murderers with schizophrenia

“…Given the comorbidity of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and substance use disorders (SUDs) reported to characterize antisocial individuals with schizophrenia (Hodgins, 2004; Moran and Hodgins, 2004; Mueser et al, 1997), and the effects these conditions separately may have upon EEG functioning (Costa and Bauer, 1997; Lijffijt et al, 2009; Lindberg et al, 2005), it was important in the present study to assess for comorbidities with these illnesses. Overall rates for antisocial personality and substance use disorders in this sample, however, were very low.…”