Recent advances in treating cognitive impairment in schizophrenia

Abstract

Drugs such as modafanil and galantamine are being evaluated, and a number of new drugs are currently in development. Standardized cognitive assessment measures are being developed so studies can be compared more easily. This field is advancing rapidly, but as yet, no widely applicable, evidence-based treatments are available to the clinician.

Dissociation of acute and chronic intermittent phencyclidine-induced performance deficits in the 5-choice serial reaction time task: influence of clozapine

“…Whilst the hallucinations and delusions associated with schizophrenia are alleviated by both typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs, these drugs have limited capacity to treat the cognitive deficits. Furthermore, although there was initial enthusiasm for the ability of the atypical drugs to treat cognitive deficits (Meltzer and McGurk 1999), this has not been borne out in the recent CATIE studies (Lieberman 2006) and other studies which indicate that improvements are at best only partial and fall short of restoring function to normal (Daban et al 2006;Bowie and Harvey 2006;Galletly 2008). This poses a major challenge for drug discovery, not least in terms of the appropriateness and translational nature of the preclinical tests employed to assess the potential efficacy of new drug targets.…”

Predictors and mediators of add-on mirtazapine-induced cognitive enhancement in schizophrenia – A path model investigation

“…As no a single antipsychotic agent has been consistently shown to be a neurocognitive enhancer, various adjunctive psychopharmacological agents have been studied, yet so far with inconsistent and evasive results (Keefe et al, 2007a(Keefe et al, , 2007bGalletly, 2009).…”

“…Deficits in neurocognitive functioning in schizophrenia and their untoward effects on functional outcome have been well documented (Galletly, 2009), and enhancement of neurocognitive functions currently remains a principal goal in the treatment of this disease. As no a single antipsychotic agent has been consistently shown to be a neurocognitive enhancer, various adjunctive psychopharmacological agents have been studied, yet so far with inconsistent and evasive results (Keefe et al, 2007a(Keefe et al, , 2007bGalletly, 2009).…”

Role of cognitive enhancement in schizophrenia

“…77 This lack of progress in psychopharmacology has highlighted the need for effective nonpharmacological methods of cognitive remediation.…”