Cognitive deficit in schizophrenia and its remediation
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| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder characterized by a variety of signs and symptoms. Since its earliest conception as “dementia praecox“ (i.e. early onset dementia), impaired cognitive function has also been considered a core feature. Research into cognition and schizophrenia over the past years has recently been growing. Cognitive deficit is a virtually omni-present component of schizophrenic psychopathology, independent of other aspects of schizophrenia. It underlays other symptoms of schizophrenia and affects the success of therapy, ability of social adaptation and patients’ quality of life. Cognitive skills in schizophrenia predict social functioning and may serve as outcome measures in the development of effective treatment strategies. One of the possibilities of non-pharmacological improvement of cognitive function is remediation using computer rehabilitation software. It has been proved as an effective method. In our study we found global positive effect of aproximately bimonthly (20sessions) training of cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia using computer rehabilitation software PSS CogRehab. Except verbal fluency, which appears stationary during training of cognitive function, all others domains of cognitive function improved during rehabilitation using computer training of cognitive function. The biggest improvement we located in these domains: psychomotor speed, auditive reaction time and verbal learning and memory, where improvement in neuropsychological tests reached statistically significant difference. |
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