Impairments of Prepulse Inhibition of the Startle Response in Abstinent Alcoholic Male Patients

Abstract

These data suggest that sensory information processing mechanisms could be damaged in abstinent alcoholic patients. The fact that these findings are common to other psychiatric disorders could indicate the existence of a common vulnerability marker and explain the high degree of comorbidity between alcoholism and other mental illnesses.

Impulsive choice and anxiety-like behavior in adult rats exposed to chronic intermittent ethanol during adolescence and adulthood

“…In humans, increased ASRs have been observed in alcohol-dependent patients during acute withdrawal and in early-onset alcohol-dependent patients after protracted withdrawal [25, 36]. In contrast, other studies reported reduced ASRs in alcohol-dependent individuals during protracted abstinence [63]. These discrepant findings in both animals and humans may be attributable to procedural differences in startle assessment between laboratories (e.g., pulse intensities; assessments of the ASR under dark or light conditions) and ethanol exposure regimens.…”

Adolescent Social Isolation as a Model of Heightened Vulnerability to Comorbid Alcoholism and Anxiety Disorders

“…PPI deficits are commonly reported in schizophrenic patients (Javitt and Freedman, 2015; Powell et al, 2012) as well as in individuals with obsessive–compulsive and panic disorder (Kohl et al, 2013). Impaired PPI has also been described in children of alcoholics (Grillon et al, 1997, 2000), heavy drinkers (Hutchison et al, 2003), and abstinent alcoholics (Marin et al, 2012). In aSI rats, PPI deficits have been observed immediately postisolation (Ko and Liu, 2015; Liu et al, 2011; Powell et al, 2015) and well into adulthood, even when aGH rats were then isolated as adults (McCool and Chappell, 2009).…”

Startle-Response Based Tasks and Laboratory Measures of Impulsivity in Abstinent Alcoholic Patients

“…A risk factor associated with the development of alcohol use disorders (AUD) is impulsivity. Recently, other neurophysiological paradigms, such as the Startle-Response Based Tasks (SRBT) and its different forms of plasticity, have been proposed as vulnerability markers for the development of alcoholism (Grillon et al, 1997;Marin et al, 2012).…”

“…Regarding the magnitude of the SR, research related to AUD has provided varied results, with some studies demonstrating a reduction in the magnitude of the SR in heavy drinkers (Hutchison et al, 2003), in abstinent alcohol-dependent men (Marin et al, 2012) and after alcohol intake in healthy subjects (Grillon et al, 1994;Hutchison et al, 1997); and others showing an increase of the magnitude of the SR during Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome (AWS) (Howard and Ford, 1992;Krystal et al, 1997;Schellekens et al, 2012), especially after 2 or more detoxifications (Krystal et al, 1997), in early-onset alcohol-dependent patients (Schellekens et al, 2012), and a decrease to a lesser degree compared to other clinical populations after exposure to alcohol in young men who have a parental history of alcoholism (Grillon et al, 2000). Studies based on PPI-which refers to the ability of innocuous sensory events presented before a startle-eliciting stimulus to inhibit or reduce the startle reflex (Braff et al, 1992) and which has been described as an operational measure of sensorimotor gating (Swerdlow et al, 2006)-show that it is impaired in heavy drinkers (Hutchison et al, 2003), in alcohol-dependent abstinent men (Marin et al, 2012), during AWS (Keedwell et al, 2001), in children and young adults with a family history of alcoholism (Grillon et al, 1997(Grillon et al, , 2000 and with exposure to alcohol in healthy subjects (Hutchison et al, 1997). When habituation has been studied, it has been shown that there is a decrease in children with a family history of alcoholism (Grillon et al, 1997).…”

“…The aim of the present study was to explore the correlation between laboratory measures of impulsivity and the startle-response paradigms in the alcoholic population, in order to shed light on a possible common origin of both as risk factors for the development of AUD. Our hypotheses were the following: (a) According to the results of our previous study (Marin et al, 2012), alcohol-dependent patients will exhibit a lower magnitude of the SR, a lesser percentage of the PPI and a lower habituation compared to healthy controls; (b) Magnitude of the SR could correlate either positively or negatively with measures of impulsivity, depending on the type of impulsivity considered ( poor inhibitory control vs delay of reward); (c) PPI will correlate negatively with measures of impulsivity, so that alcohol-dependent patients with lower percentages of PPI will have higher levels of impulsivity; and (d) SH will correlate positively with measures of impulsivity, so that alcohol-dependent patients with a faster habituation will show higher levels of impulsivity, as previous studies have demonstrated.…”