This competing continuation application proposes two large projects to study the skin conductance orienting response (SCOR) and startle eye-blink modification (SEM) in order to better understand attentional and affective disorders in schizophrenic outpatients and putatively psychosis-prone college students. Attentional and affective dysfunctions have long been considered central deficits in schizophrenia, but have proven complex and difficult to measure. SCOR and SEM have been hypothesized to provide non- verbal, non-voluntary indices of basic attentional and affective processes; hence they may provide unique keys to understanding these dysfunctions in schizophrenia. The overall aim of the first project, which consists of a package of five experiments, is to evaluate the contribution of automatic and controlled cognitive processing in the mediation of SCOR and SEM. All five experiments in the first project require subjects to perform a difficult visual tracking primary task while SCOR and SEM are measured to either task-irrelevant stimuli or secondary task stimuli. The rationale is that if the primary tracking task is resource-demanding, then it will engage a considerable proportion of limited processing resources, leaving only a few resources to process concurrent stimuli. Thus, it will be possible to determine the effects of varying the available processing resources on SCOR and SEM in normal college students, putatively psychosis-prone college students, recent-onset schizophrenic patients, and demographically matched normal controls. The overall aim of the second proposed project, which consists of a package of three experiments, is to develop a new paradigm to separately evaluate attentional and affective modulation of SEM. These experiments will test theoretically derived hypotheses in groups of normal college students, anhedonic college students, recent-onset schizophrenic, patients, and demographically matched normal controls. These experiments will address issues regarding the affective specificity of emotional dysfunctions and will constitute the first test of affective modulation of SEM in schizophrenic patients.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award (R37)
Project #
5R37MH046433-08
Application #
2430932
Study Section
Clinical Neuroscience Review Committee (CNR)
Project Start
1990-06-01
Project End
1998-05-31
Budget Start
1997-06-01
Budget End
1998-05-31
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
1997
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Southern California
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
041544081
City
Los Angeles
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
90089
Hazlett, Erin A; Dawson, Michael E; Schell, Anne M et al. (2008) Probing attentional dysfunctions in schizophrenia: Startle modification during a continuous performance test. Psychophysiology 45:632-42
Schell, Anne M; Dawson, Michael E; Rissling, Anthony et al. (2005) Electrodermal predictors of functional outcome and negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Psychophysiology 42:483-92
Wynn, Jonathan K; Sergi, Mark J; Dawson, Michael E et al. (2005) Sensorimotor gating, orienting and social perception in schizophrenia. Schizophr Res 73:319-25
Wynn, Jonathan K; Dawson, Michael E; Schell, Anne M (2004) The functional relationship between visual backward masking and prepulse inhibition. Psychophysiology 41:306-12
Wynn, Jonathan K; Dawson, Michael E; Schell, Anne M et al. (2004) Prepulse facilitation and prepulse inhibition in schizophrenia patients and their unaffected siblings. Biol Psychiatry 55:518-23
Oray, Serkan; Lu, Zhong-Lin; Dawson, Michael E (2002) Modification of sudden onset auditory ERP by involuntary attention to visual stimuli. Int J Psychophysiol 43:213-24
Hazlett, E A; Dawson, M E; Schell, A M et al. (2001) Attentional stages of information processing during a continuous performance test: a startle modification analysis. Psychophysiology 38:669-77
Schell, A M; Wynn, J K; Dawson, M E et al. (2000) Automatic and controlled attentional processes in startle eyeblink modification: effects of habituation of the prepulse. Psychophysiology 37:409-17
Dawson, M E; Schell, A M; Hazlett, E A et al. (2000) On the clinical and cognitive meaning of impaired sensorimotor gating in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Res 96:187-97
Bohmelt, A H; Schell, A M; Dawson, M E (1999) Attentional modulation of short- and long-lead-interval modification of the acoustic startle eyeblink response: comparing auditory and visual prestimuli. Int J Psychophysiol 32:239-50

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