Research Status and Strategies for Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia.

Abstract

Cognit ion is divided into neurocognit ion and social cognition, both of which are interconnected w i t h e a c h o t h e r a n d y e t a r e m u t u a l l y independent. Neurocognition, which is based on neuroanatomical structures, function connections, neuroelectrophysiology and molecular biology, is the basis of the human brain and the reflection of advanced integrative neural function in behavioral science. Social cognition is the cognitive process of perceiving others’ emotions or intentions and making responses. It took almost a century from 1893 when Kraepelin first described the cognitive impairment of schizophrenia as “Dementia praecox” to the last two decades when the research on cognition recaptured people’s attention. It is commonly accepted that cognitive impairment is one of the symptoms of schizophrenia that is characterized by cognitive impairment in learning, memory, attention, speed of information processing, executive function and social cognition, and the severity of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia is often worse than that of healthy controls. Studies found that neurocognition had an impact on the variance of functional outcome in schizophrenia patients with an effect size of 20%-60%. According to a meta-analysis, 8 out of 9 studies showed that social cognition was also related to the functional outcome in schizophrenia patients. Although the research on cognitive impairment of schizophrenia has made great progress in recent years, there are still many deficiencies to be solved, including a lack of depth and undesirable results that we need to work together to solve.