About this Research Topic

Background

Schizophrenia is a serious mental disorder that affects up to 1% of the population worldwide. Cognitive deficits are a core feature of the disorder and strong predictors of social and functional outcome of schizophrenia. Research examining the cognitive abilities of people with schizophrenia revealed that cognitive impairment affects up to 75% of patients across multiple domains including processing speed, working memory, verbal memory, attention, executive functioning, and social cognition. Cognitive deficits often pre-date illness onset, can be present both during the acute and chronic phases of the illness and moreover they show little to modest response to pharmacological treatment at most.

According to recent research, structural and functional neuroimaging techniques may be used to better understand the neurological underpinnings of schizophrenia-related cognitive abnormalities. These methods can give you information about the neural networks that underlie cognitive processes and may help to identify potential targets for cognitive remediation therapy and/or novel pharmacological treatments.

The goal of this Research Topic is to provide a broad overview of the underlying mechanisms of these cognitive deficits and to explore possible interventions and treatments and better outcomes for patients with this debilitating disorder.

We welcome the submission of a range of different article types (research article, brief research article, mini-review, review, case report, opinion, perspective, etc..) focusing on, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Neurobiological underpinnings of cognitive and social cognitive deficit in
schizophrenia
• Neurobiological mechanisms of cognitive remediation interventions in
schizophrenia
• Structural and functional brain correlates of cognitive and social cognitive function
in schizophrenia
• Neurophysiological correlates of cognitive and social cognitive deficit in
schizophrenia
• Cognitive and social cognitive deficits in ARMS for psychosis, FES, and chronic
schizophrenia
• Longitudinal course of cognitive and social cognitive deficit in schizophrenia

Keywords: Treatment, Intervention, Structural and functional neuroimaging, Outcome, Social cognition, Cognitive functioning, Schizophrenia

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