Cognitive and personality analysis of startle reactivity in a large cohort of healthy males

•The cognitive and personality correlates of startle reactivity are underexplored.•We assessed healthy males for cognition, personality, mood and baseline startle.•Startle reactivity was inversely related to sensitivity to reward.•Startle non-responders had poorer strategy, working memory and sustai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biological psychology 2013-12, Vol.94 (3), p.582-591
Main Authors: Giakoumaki, Stella G., Roussos, Panos, Tsapakis, Eva-Maria, Koiliari, Erasmia, Pasparakis, Emmanouil, Zouraraki, Chrysoula, Bitsios, Panos
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic startle reflex
Acoustic Stimulation
Adolescent
Adult
Attention - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition - physiology
Executive function
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Impulsivity
Intermediate phenotype
LOGOS cohort
Male
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Neuropsychological Tests
Personality - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reflex, Startle - physiology
Reward
Startle non responders
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Summary:•The cognitive and personality correlates of startle reactivity are underexplored.•We assessed healthy males for cognition, personality, mood and baseline startle.•Startle reactivity was inversely related to sensitivity to reward.•Startle non-responders had poorer strategy, working memory and sustained attention.•Low startle reactivity may become a phenotype for disorders of affect/impulsivity. Subjects with low/undetectable startle are usually excluded from startle studies but few reports not confounded by this factor, show reduced startle in healthy impulsive subjects, or clinical populations with disorders of affect and impulsivity but also in schizophrenia and its prodrome. We examined the relationship of startle reactivity including startle “non-responding” status to cognitive and affective personality traits in a large and ethnically/demographically homogeneous cohort of healthy males from the LOGOS study, Heraklion, Crete. Startle reactivity was monotonically related to sensitivity to reward (higher in “non-responders”, lower in strong responders). In addition, “non-responders” had poorer strategy, working memory and sustained attention performance compared to responder tertile groups. More research in clinical and high risk populations is required to examine if low/undetectable startle reactivity is a valuable intermediate phenotype for disorders of affect and impulsivity. It is possible that the “non-responsive” status may capture disease related features such as executive dysfunction.
ISSN:0301-0511
1873-6246
DOI:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.09.005