The revolutionary growth of the cognitive neurosciences offers enormous promise for understanding themechanisms underlying antipsychotic interventions. The overarching goal of the Research Methods Core isto support the application of state-of-the-art neurocognitive and neuroimaging methodologies that may helpclarify the mechanisms underlying effective intervention in schizophrenia such as the prediction of treatmentresponse, functional outcome, and adverse events in a unique cohort of first episode patients with minimal orno prior antipsychotic drug exposure. Compared to conventional treatment targets such as clinicalsymptomatology, cognitive neuroscience methods theoretically are more closely representative of braindysfunction, and should ultimately be superior: (1) in classifying individuals who will benefit differentially fromspecific treatments, and some day, in the selection, dosing and titration of treatments; (2) in identifying thestable, enduring features of pathology that are most likely to predict distinctive outcomes, with implicationsfor disposition and rehabilitative efforts; (3) in identifying neurobiological mechanisms that mediate treatmentresponse with current, second-generation antipsychotics; and finally, (4) in serving as treatment targetsthemselves, possibly leading to the next generation of rationally-derived treatments. Moreover, informationderived from cognitive neuroscience methods in well-controlled clinical trials will further provide crucialfeedback to basic neuroscience research about the mechanisms underlying effective treatment. TheResearch Methods Core provides infrastructure support for the individual research projects, which includeassessment of neurocognitive functioning, region-of-interest volumetric approaches, diffusion tensorimaging, cortical surface mapping and positron emission tomography to predict treatment response andmultidimensional outcome measures.
The specific aims of the Core include: (1) to integrate individualprojects within the Center; (2) to develop innovative methods for data analysis and image processing; (3) tocommunicate findings and train investigators in neuropsychological and neuroimaging methods and (4) tomaintain high standards of reliability for individual research projects. Mechanisms by which the Coreaccomplishes these aims will be addressed in turn, after a brief overview of the three major platforms forcognitive neuroscience research within the ZHH CIDAR.
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