Sensory gating

Sensory gating can also occur in different forms through changes in both perception and sensation, affected by various factors such as "arousal, recent stimulus exposure, and selective attention.

"[1] Although sensory gating is largely automatic, it also occurs within the context of attention processing as the brain selectively seeks for goal-relevant information.

The cocktail party effect demonstrates sensory gating in hearing, but the other senses also go through the same process protecting primary cortical areas from being overwhelmed.

Other areas of the brain associated with sensory gating include the amygdala, striatum, medial prefrontal cortex, and mid-brain dopamine cell region (GABAergic neurons only).

Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalographies (MEG) are used to measure brain responses and are common techniques for studying sensory gating.

Since people with schizophrenia can often have an overload of attended stimuli, the P50 wave may serve a critical role in illuminating sensory gating at a neurological level.

[5] Currently the test has been conducted on mice, and results have been identical to human subjects in that brain activity has decreased on the second sound.

[5] The continuing study, to be verified, suggests that the filter system is indeed in the brainstem, offering hope for finding the neurological source of schizophrenia.

One experiment conducted in 2015 suggests that so-called “leaky” attention spans in people with high levels of psychopathology may lead to increased creativity.

During the study, the researchers discovered that creative people tend to show reduced sensory gating, filtering out sound less than the normal subjects.

The results proved that people with creative achievements did indeed show a reduced latent inhibition compared to the average subjects.