Physiology
The assumption that the attentional process that produces LI in normal subjects is dysfunctional in schizophrenia patients has stimulated considerable research, with humans, as well as with rats and mice. There is much data that indicate that dopamine agonists and antagonists modulate LI in rats and in normal humans. Dopamine agonists, such as amphetamine, abolish LI while dopamine antagonists, such as haloperidol and other anti-psychotic drugs, produce a super-LI effect. In addition, manipulations of putative dopamine pathways in the brain also have the expected effects on LI. Thus, hippocampal and septal lesions interfere with the development of LI, as do lesions in selective portions of the nucleus accumbens. With human subjects, there is evidence that acute, non-medicated schizophrenics show reduced LI compared to chronic, medicated schizophrenics and to healthy subjects, while there is no difference in the amount of LI in the latter two groups. Finally, symptomatically normal subjects who score high on self-report questionnaires that measure psychotic-proneness or schizotypality also exhibit reduced LI compared to those who score low on the scales.
In addition to LI illustrating a fundamental strategy for information processing and providing a useful tool for examining attentional dysfunctions in pathological groups, the LI procedure has been used to screen for drugs that can ameliorate schizophrenia symptoms LI. LI has also been used to explain why certain therapies, such as alcohol aversion treatments, are not as effective as might be expected. On the other hand, LI procedures may be useful in counteracting some of the undesirable side-effects that frequently accompany radiation and chemo-therapies for cancer, as for example food aversion. LI research also has suggested techniques that may be efficacious in the prophylactic treatment of certain fears and phobias. Of popular interest, several studies have attempted to relate LI to creativity.
In summary, the basic LI phenomenon represents some output of a selective attention process that results in learning to ignore irrelevant stimuli. It has become an important tool for understanding information processing in general, as well as attentional dysfunctions in schizophrenia, and it has implications for a variety of practical problems.
Read more about this topic: Latent Inhibition
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