Brain stimulation may improve cognitive performance in people with schizophrenia
There is currently a lack of effective treatments and an urgent need for new interventions to address these problems in short-term memory and decision making, which are often severely impaired in people with schizophrenia. This can make it difficult for them to ade-quately plan, sustain necessary focus and attention, and remember information, which has a significant impact on day-to-day life. These so-called cognitive deficits are not addressed by current antipsychotic medications, which only treat more widely recognised symptoms such as delusions and hallucina-tions. Researchers are therefore increasingly looking towards novel interventions and 'neuromodulation' has emerged as a promising new technique that can physically alter and improve the brain's functioning. In the study, published in Brain , the researchers set out to use one particular form of neuromodulation -- transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) -- to see if they could undo some of these cogniti...