This is an application to continue a Translational Research Center in the Behavioral Sciences, consistent with the NIMH program announcement PAR-04-151. The """"""""Center for Neurocognition and Emotion in Schizophrenia"""""""" will continue to integrate basic behavioral researchers and clinical researchers to facilitate meaningful and novel collaborations. We will focus on two basic behavioral domains that are fundamental to schizophrenia: neurocognition and emotion. The three primary overarching aims of the proposed Center are: 1) to translate major advances in basic behavioral research on cognitive and emotional processes into new clinical research;2) to advance our understanding of the fundamental role that core neurocognitive and affective abnormalities play in functional capacity and functional outcome for individuals with schizophrenia;and 3) to examine different phases of illness as well as the short-term developmental course of schizophrenia as means of shedding much more light on the roles of the core neurocognitive and emotional abnormalities in illness onset, progression, or recovery. To do this, we will continue and selectively expand our teams of clinical investigators and basic behavioral investigators for the four projects: """"""""Encoding and Retrieval Processes in Declarative Memory"""""""", """"""""Attention and Dual-Task Interference"""""""", """"""""Social Cognition: Interpersonal and Emotional Processes"""""""", and """"""""Stress and Emotional Reactivity"""""""" These teams of basic and clinical investigators will permit us to examine core processes in schizophrenia that have not been studied through these novel paradigms. Building on our current findings, projects will include studies designed to determine neural substrates of these core abnormalities using either fMRI or psychophysiological methods, where appropriate will probe the malleability of these deficits through within-session manipulations, and will examine how emotional states and motivational processes influence core neurocognitive deficits in attention and memory in schizophrenia. Six cores will directly serve the needs of the research projects and the translational behavioral science mission of the Center: 1) the Administration and Training Core, 2) two service cores (Data and Methodology Core, Functional Outcome and Symptom Assessment Core), and 3) three clinical cores (Prevention Research Program, Aftercare Research Program, and Chronic Schizophrenia Recruitment and Assessment Core).
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