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The Sensory Filter in Schizophrenia: A Study of Habituation, Arousal, and the Dopamine Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Thomas Horvath  and
Russell Meares
Thomas Horvath
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305, U.S.A.
Russell Meares
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne; Austin Hospital, Heidelberg, Victoria, 3084, Australia
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Summary

The possible failure of a notional sensory filter in schizophrenia was studied by means of habituation of the orienting response. Non-paranoid schizophrenics failed to habituate, but paranoids habituated normally. Paranoids, however, showed a different impairment: they responded to a dishabituating tone as if the novel stimulus were somewhat familiar.

The failure of habituation in non-paranoids could not be explained in terms of arousal when the index was the rate of skin conductance fluctuation. Neurotic controls showed considerably higher levels than either group of schizophrenics.

Non-paranoid schizophrenics had lost the normal inverse relationship between habituation and level of arousal as manifested in the rate of spontaneous skin conductance fluctuation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 134 , Issue 1 , January 1979 , pp. 39 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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