Chou HH, Twamley E, Swerdlow NR, Hsun-Hua Chou, Elizabeth Twamley, Neal R. Swerdlow
Abstract
Current antipsychotic medications do little to improve real-life function in most schizophrenia patients. A dispassionate view of the dispersed and variable neuropathology of schizophrenia strongly suggests that it is not currently, and may never be, correctable with drugs. In contrast, several forms of cognitive therapy have been demonstrated to have modest but lasting positive effects on cognition, symptoms, and functional outcomes in schizophrenia patients. To date, attempts to improve clinical outcomes in schizophrenia by adding pro-cognitive drugs to antipsychotic regimens have had limited success, but we propose that a more promising strategy would be to pair drugs that enhance specific neurocognitive functions with cognitive therapies that challenge and reinforce those functions. By using medications that engage spared neural resources in the service of cognitive interventions, it might be possible to significantly enhance the efficacy of cognitive therapies. We review and suggest several laboratory measures that might detect potential pro-neurocognitive effects of drugs in individual patients, using a "test dose" design, aided by specific biomarkers predicting an individual's drug sensitivity. Lastly, we argue that drug classes viewed as "counter-intuitive" based on existing models for the pathophysiology of schizophrenia-including pro-catecholaminergic and NMDA-antagonistic drugs-might be important candidate "pro-cognitive therapy" drugs.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 March 2016.
All research outputs
#7,461,764
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Outputs from Handbook of experimental pharmacology
#222
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Outputs of similar age
#54,150
of 193,220 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Handbook of experimental pharmacology
#7
of 16 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,124,608 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 71st percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 694 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 16 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 56% of its contemporaries.
