The study found that the deficiency of P50 inhibition in schizophrenics may not be related to their clinical symptoms and cognitive disorders

Schizophrenia is often associated with cognitive impairment, including general intelligence, attention, working memory, language fluency, language learning and memory, and executive dysfunction Cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenic patients remained stable for a period of time, but its neural mechanism and pathophysiological mechanism are still unclear Sensory gating can suppress irrelevant stimuli and ensure the cognitive integrity of information before it reaches higher-order areas of the brain for more detailed processing Cognitive deficits caused by sensory deficits are usually evaluated by neuropsychological tests, neuroimaging tests and event-related potentials (ERP) The P50 paradigm of condition test is usually used Sensory gating defect is considered as a "fixed trait", and the response induced by P50 seems to be a sensitive biomarker of sensory gating defect However, most previous studies on the relationship between P50 and cognitive impairment only focused on the P50 ratio Therefore, it is not clear about the relationship between P50 components and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenics, and as far as the researchers know, there is no report on the study of Han population In order to explore the relationship between the inhibition of P50 and cognitive impairment in patients with schizophrenia, 270 schizophrenics and 116 healthy controls were included in the study The psychopathology of schizophrenics was measured by PANSS The cognitive function of all subjects was evaluated by using the matrix consensus cognitive battery (MCCB), while the P50 component was recorded by using the condition testing P50 paradigm and ERP technology It was found that the cognitive score of MCCB and its subscale in chronic schizophrenia was significantly lower than that in the normal control group, indicating that there was cognitive deficit in schizophrenia Similarly, the P50 ratio of patients was significantly higher than that of healthy controls, suggesting that sensory gating disorders may be related to the pathophysiological mechanism of schizophrenia The sensory gating represented by P50 is related to the polymorphism of α 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene promoter at 15q14 site Stimulation of the receptor or the agonist dmxb-a of the receptor can improve the inhibition defect and cognitive dysfunction of P50 Therefore, it is speculated that P50 may be an effective biomarker and participate in the pathogenesis of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia Interestingly, no association of P50 components with any cognitive domain or clinical symptoms was found in this study The uncorrelation between auditory gating and cognitive performance in schizophrenics suggests that auditory gating may not filter information through special neural channels in the pre attention stage It is worth mentioning that there is a significant correlation between P50 and cognitive performance in the control group, which indicates that the sensory gating represented by P50 may be a sensitive biomarker of cognitive function in healthy people This study shows that schizophrenia patients in China have a defect of P50 inhibition, but this defect may not be related to clinical symptoms and cognitive disorders.