Efficacy of a Culturally Adapted Emotion Recognition Training Program in Improving Facial Emotion Recognition in Persons with Schizophrenia.

Background: Facial emotion recognition (FER) deficits are being considered as core features of social cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, associated with socio-occupational dysfunction. Social cognition intervention programs have been shown to improve these deficits; however, there are no such intervention strategies in India. In this study, we aim to examine the efficacy of Training of Affect Recognition - Indian Version (TAR-IV) to enhance the FER abilities of people with schizophrenia.

The relationship between empathy, theory of mind and facial affect recognition in schizophrenia patients.

Although impairments in social cognition are a core feature in schizophrenia, the relationship between its subcomponents is less clear. Nineteen schizophrenia patients and 20 matched healthy controls were tested for emotion recognition, and for the cognitive and affective subcomponents of empathy and theory of mind (ToM). Patients scored significantly worse than controls on cognitive empathy and both subcomponents of ToM.

Efficacy of Integrated Social Cognitive Remediation vs. Neurocognitive Remediation in Improving Functional Outcome in Schizophrenia: Concept and Design of a Multicenter, Single-Blind RCT (The ISST Study).

Background: Although clinically effective treatment is available for schizophrenia, recovery often is still hampered by persistent poor psychosocial functioning, which in turn is limited by impairments in neurocognition, social cognition, and social behavioral skills. Although cognitive remediation has shown general efficacy in improving cognition and social functioning, effects still need to be improved and replicated in appropriately powered, methodologically rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Existing evidence indicates that effects can most likely be optimized by combining treatment approaches to simultaneously address both social cognitive and social behavioral processes.

Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) versus Training in Affect Recognition (TAR) in patients with schizophrenia: A randomized controlled trial.

Introduction: Training in Affect Recognition (TAR) is a "targeted" and computer-aided program that has been shown to effectively attenuate facial affect recognition deficits and improve social functioning in patients with schizophrenia. Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) is a group "broad-based" intervention, that has also been shown to improve emotion recognition, theory of mind (ToM), and social functioning. To date, no study has compared the efficacy of two different social cognitive interventions.

Oxytocin reactivity to an emotional challenge paradigm and its relation to social-cognitive functions in healthy volunteers.

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) is known to be an important modulator of social cognition. It has been shown that lower OT plasma concentrations are linked to impairments in social cognition. Studies have also shown that intranasal OT may enhance social-cognitive abilities in healthy subjects.

Training of Affect Recognition impacts electrophysiological correlates of facial affect recognition in schizophrenia: Analyses of fixation-locked potentials.

Objectives: Training of Affect Recognition (TAR) is a useful approach to restoring cognitive function in schizophrenic patients. Along with improving visual exploration of faces and altering central information processing in relevant brain areas, TAR attenuates impairments in facial affect recognition. In the present study, we investigate the effects of TAR on early electrophysiological correlates of facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.

Effects of Training of Affect Recognition on the recognition and visual exploration of emotional faces in schizophrenia.

Background: Schizophrenia patients have impairments in facial affect recognition and display scanpath abnormalities during the visual exploration of faces. These abnormalities are characterized by fewer fixations on salient feature areas and longer fixation durations. The present study investigated whether social-cognitive remediation not only improves performance in facial affect recognition but also normalizes patients' gaze behavior while looking at faces.

[Pilot study on a modular outpatient treatment programme following public order placements because of endangerment in patients with psychotic disorders].

Patients with psychotic disorders who were detained by public order because of endangerment, can be regarded as a population at risk of further endangerment, public order placements and a forensic course. Concepts of specific aftercare for this subgroup are lacking thus far. The present pilot study explores the feasibility of a modular therapeutic outpatient programme that is tailored to specific subgroup needs and is applied over six months.

[Training of social-cognitive functions--new approaches towards the avoidance of psychosocial disabilities in schizophrenia].

Impairments in social cognitive processes are present across the course of schizophrenia despite clinically efficacious traditional treatment and contribute to poor functional outcome. Thus, during the last decade specialised social cognitive remediation programmes have been developed, which achieve improvements in social cognition with large effect sizes. In contrast, remediation targeting basic cognition seems neither necessary nor sufficient for such improvements.

Facial affect recognition performance and event-related potentials in violent and non-violent schizophrenia patients.

We investigated whether male inpatients with schizophrenia and a history of hands-on violent offences (forensic schizophrenic, FOS) are more impaired in emotion recognition than matched schizophrenia patients without any history of violence (general psychiatric schizophrenic, GPS). This should become apparent in performance in psychometry and in scalp event-related brain potentials (ERPs) evoked by pictures of facial affect. FOS and GPS (each n = 19) were matched concerning age, intelligence, comorbid addiction, medication and illness duration.

Training of affect recognition in schizophrenia patients with violent offences: behavioral treatment effects and electrophysiological correlates.

Violent offenders with schizophrenia have a particularly poor performance level in facial affect recognition. Nineteen male schizophrenia patients, who had been committed to psychiatric hospital detention because of violent offences and lack of criminal responsibility, were recruited to receive the Training of Affect Recognition (TAR). Performance in the Pictures of Facial Affect (PFA)-test and event-related potentials (ERPs) were registered in a pre-post-treatment design.

Training of affect recognition (TAR) in schizophrenia--impact on functional outcome.

Deficits in facial affect recognition as one aspect of social cognitive deficits are treatment targets to improve functional outcome in schizophrenia. According to preliminary results antipsychotics alone show little effects on affect recognition. A few randomized intervention studies have evaluated special psychosocial treatment programs on social cognition.

The effects of combined acamprosate and integrative behaviour therapy in the outpatient treatment of alcohol dependence: a randomized controlled trial.

Aims: The aim of this randomized, controlled, multisite trial was to evaluate the efficacy of combined treatment with integrative behaviour therapy (IBT) and acamprosate on drinking behaviour in detoxified alcohol-dependent patients.

Methods: A total of 371 patients were randomized to one of the three treatment conditions: IBT plus acamprosate, IBT plus placebo, or supportive counselling ('treatment as usual', TAU) plus acamprosate. The main outcome was success rate, i.

Cognitive behavioural treatment of negative symptoms in schizophrenia patients: study design of the TONES study, feasibility and safety of treatment.

Currently, there are no convincing treatment strategies for negative symptoms of schizophrenia. On this background, we are conducting the treatment of negative symptoms (TONES) study which addresses the question whether cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is efficacious for the reduction of negative symptoms in schizophrenia. The present paper aims at presenting the design of the clinical trial of the study as well as the treatment concept.

Effects of abstinence on brain morphology in alcoholism: a MRI study.

Chronic alcohol abuse leads to morphological changes of the brain. We investigated if these volumetric changes are reversible after a period of abstinence. For this reason 41 male and 15 female alcohol patients underwent MRI-scanning after in-patient detoxification (baseline) entering alcoholism treatment programs, and between 6 and 9 months later (follow-up), in a phase of convalescence.

Remediation of facial affect recognition impairments in patients with schizophrenia: a new training program.

Impairments in facial affect recognition are trait-like characteristics in schizophrenia and might contribute to poor social functioning. A special Training of Affect Recognition program was developed, which shows a good feasibility and promising treatment effects. The specificity of these effects can now be demonstrated in a control group design.

Long-term course in schizophrenia: concepts, methods and research strategies.

Objective: This paper summarizes current knowledge about course and outcome in schizophrenia by selecting particular information and by drawing conclusions in the light of theoretical and methodological considerations, in order to illustrate future research strategies, as well as to consider novel targets of treatment.

Method: Based on examples from the literature the concepts of course and outcome as well as intervening factors of course and outcome are discussed by considering study results within their methodological and theoretical framework restrictions.

Results: The heterogeneity of the disorder, manifest in its variable phenomenology, illness course, treatment response and outcome, complicates research but at the same time offers clues to elucidate the heterogeneity of aetiology and pathogenesis.

Prodromal states in schizophrenia.

The vulnerability-stress-coping (VSC) model is the most influential heuristic concept in understanding the course of schizophrenia, whose prodromal status still offers unsolved conceptual and methodological issues. Improved knowledge about the prodromal phase would provide a better understanding of the developing psychopathology and psychophysiology of schizophrenia and could also be of predictive value to attune therapeutic actions to the course of the illness more precisely. To shed more light on the characteristics of prodromal states, data from a German multicenter study on intermittent versus maintenance neuroleptic long-term treatment in schizophrenia (ANI study) were reanalyzed with respect to the prevalence and profile, nature, time course, and predictive value of prodromal symptoms in impending relapse.