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Physical health in schizophrenia - what's cognition got to do with it?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

B. Gallhofer
Affiliation:
Departmernt of Psychiatry and Psychotgherapy, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany EuroCog, The European Institute of Cognition and Cognitive Remediation Research, Copenhagen, Denmark
G. Sammer
Affiliation:
Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Departmernt of Psychiatry and Psychiotherapy, Justus Liebeig University, Giessen, Germany Departmernt of Psychitatry and Psychotherapy, Giessen, Germany
B. Hanewald
Affiliation:
Departmernt of Psychitatry and Psychotherapy, Social Psychiatry Unit, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

Abstract

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Patients suffering from schizophrenia are usually treated with antipsychotic agents posing a threat both to their cognitive and physical skills. Anticholinergic and antihistaminic side effects are well known to have a negative impact on mental as well as physical health and pose a major hazard regarding progress in reintegration.

Strategies changing the fate of patients have moved away from just dampening dopaminergic noise in the limbic system. Nowadays, the new focus is on cognitive remediation. The centre of these efforts is to enhance strategic and executive skills and thereby alter patients' motivation to take their life into their own hands again.

The present report aims at presenting evidence from both physical treatment strategies with the power to enhance hippocampal circuit capacity as well as cognitive remediation tools with the the aim of augmenting executive skills by rewiring cognitive circuitry in the brain.

Preliminary results demonstrate not only improved processing of mental load found with fMRI measured circuitry connectivity, but they also point to the improvement of physical parameters taken in a continuous clinical context.

The reasons for these favourable findings are not straight forward and trivial, but they seem to be the result of complex interaction between various factors. The latter are to be pursued in a large cohort and presented at a later point in time.

Type
S39-04
Copyright
Copyright © European Psychiatric Association 2011
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