Thus, it is possible to significantly improve brain function in schizophrenia, even in patients who have been ill for

an average of 20 years, and it appears that these improvements set the stage for an enduring improvement in social functioning that occurs even in the absence of other psychosocial therapies. Of note, schizophrenia participants showed a range of responses to the intervention, and even after 80 hr of intensive training, and despite significant increases in mPFC activation, they still did not demonstrate the same activation levels as those observed in healthy comparison selleck kinase inhibitor subjects. Though not all patients respond equally well to cognitive training,

a successful response appears to open a critical window for further functional gains, consistent with our previous finding that patients with higher general cognitive improvement after training show significantly better overall quality of life ratings at 6 months (Fisher et al., 2010). We do not know which aspects of the cognitive training were most responsible for the behavioral and neural improvements selleck chemicals llc we observed. The reality monitoring task had a strong verbal memory component, and the auditory/verbal learning exercises we employed (for 50 hr of the training) have been shown to improve verbal learning and memory in schizophrenia subjects in a

prior study (Fisher et al., 2009) and in the current study (Figure 3A). Indeed, after training, both overall reality monitoring task performance and mPFC signal within the a priori Mannose-binding protein-associated serine protease ROI were significantly associated with better verbal memory (Figures 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that training of auditory/verbal learning and memory processes contributes to significant behavioral improvement in reality monitoring as well as improvement in the underlying neural systems that facilitate reality monitoring. However, basic social cognition performance is also strongly correlated with reality monitoring abilities and with activation in mPFC (Benoit et al., 2010, Heberlein et al., 2008, Hooker et al., 2011, Mattavelli et al., 2011, Ochsner et al., 2004, Ochsner et al., 2005, Phan et al., 2002, Ray et al., 2010 and Sabatinelli et al., 2011). Thus, the 10 hr of computerized training in facial emotion recognition and theory of mind we provided may have also contributed significant stimulation to mPFC-related neural system function.