Schizophrenia, the most severe form of psychopathology, affects about 1% in the general population. Cognitive impairment is a central feature of this illness and causes poor functional outcome, including deficits in social, occupational, and self-care activities. The cost borne by the society in terms of social welfare administration and criminal justice, the time spent by unpaid caregivers, and the great loss of productivity due to the illness itself, are perhaps greater than the direct costs, such as, hospitalization. Functional deficits in schizophrenia are most strongly predicted by the current severity of cognitive impairment, followed by the severity of negative symptoms. Severity of positive symptoms is not strongly associated with the level of functional impairments, even in those with very poor outcome schizophrenia. There is thus an urgent need to find strategies for improving cognitive functioning in schizophrenia. Whilst atypical antipsychotics have been found to have greater effects on cognitive and negative symptoms than conventional antipsychotics, patients with schizophrenia still have lingering deficits. The proposed course will concentrate on the recent advances of the techniques that enable us to characterize cognitive deficits in schizophrenia clinically and possible methods both psychological and pharmacological in its treatment.