Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

Background: Researchers are studying how humans are able to move our eyes to a remembered region even when the target has disappeared. The ability to do this suggests that the brain can keep track of where the eyes have looked, without an external target for continued reference. This is called corollary discharge. Other research has indicated that patients with schizophrenia might have difficulty monitoring their eye movements. The corollary discharge process may be defective in patients with schizophrenia, and perhaps delayed in time. Researchers have developed a test to examine this possibility in the hope of learning more about schizophrenia and eye movement. Objectives: - To assess whether there is a defect in internal monitoring of eye movements in patients with schizophrenia. Eligibility: Individuals over 18 years of age who are able to give informed consent and are able to concentrate on a 20-minute task that involves following projected targets and moving their eyes to remembered locations. Individuals with schizophrenia will be recruited from an ongoing NIH protocol studying schizophrenia. In addition healthy will be recruited for this protocol. Design: Researchers will check participants' vision in each eye, and ask them to sit at a machine that measures eye movement in order to complete research tasks. Researchers will monitor participants ability to complete these tasks. The first task involves simply following a target that jumps to different parts of the screen. The second is a 2-step task, in which a participant is asked to look at two separate light targets and then look at the remembered target positions when the lights are off. This protocol does not provide treatment. Participants will remain under the care of their own physicians during participation in this protocol.

The purpose of this trial is to explore parent-child interactions in parents with and without psychosis, and ascertain whether a brief (10 week) supported self-help parenting program offered to parents in their own homes can help improve parents' self-efficacy and general well-being, as well as interpretations of their parent-child relationship and child behaviour in children who are 3-10 years old.

Quality of life (QoL) measurements have become an important way to evaluate the treatments and care provided to patients with schizophrenia. Understanding determinants of QoL in schizophrenia is of importance for developing effective interventions that would improve patient functional and subjective well-being. A challenge in the interpretation of QoL measures, especially in longitudinal studies, is that QoL is self-reported by the patient and might be influenced by psychological phenomena such as adaptation to illness. An important mediator of this adaptation process is a "response shift" (RS), which involves changing internal standards, values and the conceptualization of QoL. RS can be divided into three phases 1) reconceptualization (i.e., a redefinition of QoL), 2) reprioritization (i.e., a change in the importance attributed to component domains constituting QoL) and 3) recalibration (i.e., a change in a patient's internal standards of measurements). Patients may change their frame of reference, rendering scores from different measurement occasions incomparable. An RS is a potential explanation when the QoL of an individual who has experienced a serious health event or chronic condition is similar to the QoL of a healthy individual. With an RS, the concept of QoL changes over time and cannot be compared longitudinally because of changes in internal standards, values, and/or concepts. True change may be over- or underestimated when a RS is present, leading to biased estimates of the magnitude of change.The objective is to examine whether a response shift, a change in the internal standards of a patient, occurs in patients suffering from schizophrenia and in their caregivers. This is a monocentric and propective design study, with inclusion of patients and caregivers on a 12-month period, and a follow up on a 12-month period. 100 patients with schizophrenia and 100 caregivers Test approach (Response shift (RS) (pre-test - then-test), unadjusted effect (post-test - pre-test), and adjusted effect (post-test - then-test scores)) will be completed with other statistical approaches such as confirmatory factorial analysis, multilevel models and CART method.

The investigators recently showed that visuomotor integration was significantly altered in schizophrenic patients during: (i) a grip force task (Teremetz et al., 2014), and (ii) a saccadic paradigm (oculomotor task)(Amado et al., 2008). Given this findings, the investigators propose a combined study of oculomotor and grip force control to better characterize the sensorimotor integration deficit. This approach may allow for identification of behavioural biomarkers of vulnerability to develop schizophrenia.

The object is to develop a training system of simultaneous walking and cognitive training for improving cognitive function of people with schizophrenia. The training program, called "Simultaneous Walk And Think for Cognitive Health mobile application software"(SWATCH App), is developed by researchers. A randomized controlled trial will be carried out to test the effectiveness of the training system. Ninety participants will be randomly assigned to: simultaneous training of walking and cognitive group, the cognitive training group, and treatment as usual group. The intervention for those groups will lasts for 12 weeks, with a 12 week of followup. The measurements include the cognitive function, physical fitness, and quality of life.

Treatment decision-making capacity ('capacity') refers to a person's ability to make decisions about their treatment. It is an important issue for people diagnosed with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder ('psychosis') because impaired capacity can mean a person does not understand what treatment options are available, or the implications of those options. In 2018 the National Institute of Health & Care Excellence (NICE) called for clinical trials of interventions such as talking therapies to help people regain capacity. However, running these trials can take several years. One way of reducing this delay is to run several trials at the same time, as part of one bigger trial called an 'Umbrella' trial. Although Umbrella trials have been used to accelerate the development of physical health interventions, they have yet to be used in mental health. The main aims of this study are therefore to find out whether people with non-affective psychosis (schizophrenia-spectrum disorder) will take part in a single (rater) blind Umbrella trial of talking therapies to improve their treatment decision-making capacity (the DEC:IDES trial), and to understand their experiences of participation. Before a larger version of the DEC:IDES trial can begin, it needs to be established that people with psychosis will want to take part in it. Specifically, the aim of this study is to establish whether they will stay in the trial until it is finished, or whether they will leave early. It will also examine why people might leave DEC:IDES early, so that it can be improved. For these reasons, a smaller version must be completed first. This will involve 3 small clinical trials, each with N=20 (Treatment N=10; Control N=10), each testing 1 of 3 different interventions. Each intervention has been designed to help participants resolve a problem which previous evidence suggests may reduce their decision-making ability. One intervention is designed to improve self-esteem, another is designed to reduce negative beliefs about psychosis ('self-stigma') and another is designed to help people with psychosis gather more information before making decisions. The investigators will record how many people participate in and complete the trial, and they will ask people for their views on what they liked and did not like about taking part. All this information will help ensure the larger DEC:IDES trial is more acceptable to people with psychosis.

The study aims to test both the effectiveness and implementation strategy of a WeChat-based integrative family intervention (WIFI) to support family caregiving of schizophrenia in China.

Current pathophysiological models of schizophrenia focus on disconnectivity of distributed neuronal systems to explain the multitude of psychic symptoms. However, therapeutic strategies targeting this specific pathobiology are lacking. Our recent work provides strong evidence that complex video-game training interventions facilitate fronto-hippocampal structural and functional connectivity within 2 months in healthy subjects. The planned project transfers this knowledge into a training study in schizophrenic patients to counteract disease-related disconnectivity. Underlying mechanisms and behavioral effects are extensively parametrized by resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), spectroscopy and clinical short- and long-term outcome.

This phase Ib study aims to evaluate applicability of touchscreen-based cognitive test battery for assessment of ketamine-induced schizophrenia-like cognitive deficits in healthy volunteers. Additionally, the study aims to assess whether ketamine-induced cognitive deficits are reversed by modafinil using touchscreen-based test battery for testing of cognition.

Schizophrenia is a mental pathology that concerns 1% of the French population, characterized by heterogeneity of symptoms. One of them, apathy is defined as a multidimensional psychopathological state manifested by a decrease in motivation. This deficit is most common in schizophrenia and impacts the functional outcome of patients. To date, no treatment has shown a significant effect on this symptom. In other pathologies with a motivational deficit, the technique of Mental Contrasting and Implementation Intention (CM-II) showed interesting effects in improving motivation, reducing the effort related to the action. The investigators aim to propose the CM-II technique to individuals with schizophrenia to improve apathy. The investigators expected that the CM-II technique will allow an improvement of apathy which will have beneficial effects on other psychological factors (e.g., depressive symptoms). In addition, the implementation of the CM-II will provide help to global management.