Information Processing and Attention in Schizophrenia: Clinical and Functional Correlates and Treatment of Cognitive Impairment

Abstract

Abstract The study of information processing and attention abnormalities as core cognitive deficits in schizophrenia research has identified abnormalities in these domains and has clarified their relationship to neural substrate abnormalities and functional outcome in patients with schizophrenia (e.g. Braff, 1999). It has been hypothesized that the information processing and attentional deficits of schizophrenic patients are ‘central’to the disorder and are strongly associated with the clinical and functional impairments of the illness (McGhie and Chapman, 1961; Steronko and Woods, 1978; Green, 1996; Braff, 1999). In addition, the study of information processing deficits in human research and animal models has increased our understanding of the neural circuit dysfunction of schizophrenia and provided means of assessing new treatments that ‘normalize’these information processing deficits (e.g. Swerdlow et al., 1994; Braff, 1999) . If information processing abnormalities are core and enduring deficits of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and their relatives, they may also be useful intermediate phenotypic markers in genetic studies (Freedman et al., 1997).