Cognitive Training for Emotion Regulation in Psychotic Disorders
University of Georgia
Summary
The current study examines the efficacy of a cognitive training intervention for improving emotion regulation in psychotic disorders. it is hypothesized that the cognitive training program will enhance prefrontal activation, leading to enhanced emotion regulation.
Description
Psychotic disorders are serious and debilitating mental illnesses that incur substantial suffering for patients and present major challenges to our health care system. Difficulties with emotion regulation (i.e., the ability to control the emotion response using strategies) significantly predict the development and maintenance of psychotic symptoms and poor community-based functional outcomes. Recent neuroimaging research indicates that hypofrontality may underlie these deficits. Unfortunately, there is no accepted technique for remediating these emotion regulation abnormalities in psychotic di…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18–60 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- No
Inclusion Criteria: * diagnostic and statistical manual fifth edition diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder * 18-60 years old * speaks English * premorbid intelligence quotient \> 70 * clinically stable as indicated by no antipsychotic medication changes in the last month or if on depot, no change in the past 2 months. Exclusion Criteria: * history of intellectual disability or neurological disorder * history of traumatic brain injury with loss of consciousness \> 10 minutes or behavioral sequelae * substance use disorder within the last 6 months (other than nicotine) * 4\)…
Interventions
- BehavioralEmotional working memory training
Participants will complete an emotional working memory n-back training program that progressively increases difficulty and has been shown to enhance prefrontal activity in a non-psychiatric sample
- BehavioralPlacebo working memory training
Working memory training that does not involve emotional stimuli using an N-back training program
Location
- University of GeorgiaAthens, Georgia