Three types of sensory gating: exploring interrelationships, individual differences, and implications
Date
2010
Authors
Yadon, Carly Ann, author
Davies, Patricia L., advisor
Nerger, Janice L., advisor
Anderson, Charles W., committee member
Cleary, Anne M., committee member
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Abstract
The primary purpose of this dissertation was to determine how information is selectively processed in the brain through sensory gating mechanisms. Filtering, habituation, and orienting are three types of sensory gating that have never been investigated together in the same study. Although it has been well established that sensory gating is abnormal in many clinical groups, there remains a fundamental lack of understanding regarding the mechanisms of gating. For example, the functional significance of sensory gating, as well as how different types of sensory gating are related to basic brain processes and to each other, is poorly understood. Using an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm, I measured P50, N100, and P200 filtering, habituation, and orienting and administered a sequence of neuropsychological measures of attention to forty-two healthy adults. I found that filtering, orienting, and habituation and the three ERP components had different patterns of results, suggesting that the three paradigms measured distinct types of sensory gating and that gating is a multistage process. For all three types of sensory gating, higher-level attention tasks tended to predict gating responses better than lower-level attention tasks. This dissertation demonstrated that sensory gating has functional importance and these three gating paradigms seem to reflect different types of gating that should be explored in their own right.
Description
Department Head: Ernest L. Chavez.
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Subject
Sensory receptors
Cognitive neuroscience
Neuropsychological tests
Attention -- Psychological aspects