Impaired PPI and Omega-3 deficiency

I’m researching molecular effects of Omega-3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA) and decided to check if there is any effect on Prepulse Inhibition (PPI) - something that I believe is impaired in our kid.

Turns out, DHA is directly related to PPI:

PPI refers to the reduction of a reaction to a startling stimulus when it is preceded by a low-intensity prepulse.

The effect of the prepulse upon pulse processing is recognized as an operational measure of sensorimotor gating, and is demonstrable across species from mice to humans. It has been proposed that the mechanism underlying PPI regulates sensory input by filtering out irrelevant or distracting stimuli to prevent sensory information overflow and to allow for selective and efficient processing of relevant information.

PPI can be disrupted in animals by pharmacological or developmental manipulations. PPI is thought to reflect an automatic, involuntary, preattentive inhibitory process that functions to protect the initial processing of the prepulse.

Diminished PPI has been consistently demonstrated in patients with a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, schizotypal personality disorder, Huntington’s disease, obsessive compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder.

These patients are characterized by a general reduction of the ability to gate intrusive sensory, motor or cognitive information, leading to sensory flooding and cognitive fragmentation and, consequently, to a significant deficit in attention and information processing.

The experimental diets employed here were designed to provide for varying levels of DHA in the nervous system. It was hypothesized that PPI would vary with nervous system DHA content."