Cognitive impairment has been recognized as a significant cause of disability in schizophrenia
for more than 20 years (
1
,
2
), but the development of effective treatments for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia
has been slow to advance. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Measurement
and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) initiative
(
3
) brought together members of academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and the US Food
and Drug Administration to increase the viability of drug development by establishing
consensus guidelines for study methodology, identifying promising targets for further
investigation, and developing a standardized cognitive battery for use as end points
in clinical trials. The resulting MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB;
4
,
5
) is a valuable tool that has been rapidly adopted and implemented in clinical research.
However, instruments included in the MCCB are based on traditional neuropsychological
measures developed more than 3 decades ago and tend to engage multiple cognitive functions
simultaneously. This presents a significant disadvantage when testing treatments aimed
at discrete cognitive processes, where “signal” for improved functioning might be
obscured within a multi-component test of cognitive performance. With the revolution
in cognitive science over the past decade (
6
), the time is right to translate experimental cognitive neuroscience tasks into finer-grained
clinical measures for use in the development of procognitive drugs.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- What are the functional consequences of neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia?.Am J Psychiatry. 1996; 153: 321-330
- Neurocognitive deficits and functional outcome in schizophrenia: Are we measuring the “Right Stuff”?.Schizophr Bull. 2000; 26: 119-136
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- Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia II: Developing imaging biomarkers to enhance treatment development for schizophrenia and related disorders.Biol Psychiatry. 2011; 70: 7-12
- Using brain imaging measures in studies of procognitive pharmacologic agents in schizophrenia: Psychometric and quality assurance considerations.Biol Psychiatry. 2011; 70: 13-18
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation: A neuroscientific probe of cortical function in schizophrenia.Biol Psychiatry. 2011; 70: 19-27
- A roadmap for the development and validation of event-related potential biomarkers in schizophrenia research.Biol Psychiatry. 2011; 70: 28-34
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
May 3,
2011
Received:
May 3,
2011
Identification
Copyright
Published by Elsevier Inc.
ScienceDirect
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