The applicant's long-term goal is a successful academic career in clinical psychology. This training grant will enable the applicant to develop a program of research focusing on translational research applying basic cognitive neuroscience techniques to research on schizophrenia. Previous research suggests that broadly defined cognitive control deficits are associated with an increase in language production symptoms (i.e., formal thought disorder (FTD);Kerns &Berenbaum, 2002) in people with schizophrenia. However, the relationship between specific components of cognitive control, such as goal maintenance (i.e., the maintenance and representation of task context) and FTD in schizophrenia is unclear. For instance, based on previous research (Kerns et al., 2004b), it remains unclear whether complex prefrontal cortex goal maintenance versus sustained processing in the temporal lobe plays a critical role in the production of normal goal-relevant language production. In addition, although some previous studies have found an association between goal maintenance and FTD in people with schizophrenia, those studies did not use the most well-validated speech and goal maintenance tasks. Furthermore, if goal maintenance is critical for goal-relevant language production, experimentally increasing or decreasing goal maintenance demands should increase or decrease FTD in people with schizophrenia, which has not yet been demonstrated.
The specific aims of the current research are to examine whether 1) PFC goal maintenance is associated with goal-relevant language production, 2) FTD in schizophrenia is associated with poor goal maintenance task performance and 3) experimental manipulations that increase or decrease goal maintenance demands cause an increase or decrease in FTD in people with schizophrenia. The proposed research involves two studies. Study 1 will include healthy, non-psychiatric controls, while Study 2 will include people with schizophrenia. Both studies will examine the association between goal maintenance and language production. Study 1 will explore whether PFC goal maintenance is critical for normal goal-relevant language production. Study 2 will further examine the relationship between goal maintenance deficits and language production symptoms in schizophrenia. Overall, the current translational research will use cognitive neuroscience knowledge about specific cognitive control components to identify specific cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with language production symptoms. Understanding the relationship between goal maintenance deficits and FTD in schizophrenia could provide important information for understanding the risk and development of the disorder. At the same time, it is hoped that by understanding cognitive deficits associated with chronic symptoms that this research has the potential to inform intervention research (i.e., use of adjunctive medications, cognitive retraining or rehabilitation) on treatment-refractory aspects of schizophrenia (Green, 2007).
The current research has the potential to inform both prevention efforts and treatment for people with schizophrenia. Understanding the relationship between specific cognitive mechanisms and language production in normal individuals as well as the relationship between impairments in specific cognitive mechanisms and language production symptoms in schizophrenia may impact both psychological and pharmacological treatments for schizophrenia. Moreover, understanding these mechanisms may help to improve functional outcome in people with schizophrenia, since specific cognitive control mechanisms and language production symptoms have been strongly associated with functional outcome.
