Request for Funding

Mentor: Carol Tamminga M.D.
Department: Psychiatry
Room number: NC 5.914
Mail Code: 9070
Phone number: 214-648-4924
E-mail: carol.tamminga@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title: A Four-Cell Investigation of Treatment for Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia

Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): 0803-476

Project Type: patient-based research

Brief Description of Project:

I will join a project whose goal it is to test treatments for cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. The cognitive failure in schizophrenia includes problems with attention, working memory, and executive dysfunction. It is this area of symptoms which most account for psychosocial failure in the community; so treatments in this domain will have enormous practical gain for persons with the illness. Cognition is a symptom domain largely untreated in schizophrenia with the medications available today. Several good theoretical leads exist for pharmacological treatments in cognition. We have selected a drug already approved for ADHD, called atomoxetine; this drug enhances dopaminergic and noradrenergic transmission in the frontal cortex. However, it is our hypothesis that a drug treatment alone will not be sufficient to optimally alter cognition, but that a form of cognitive "exercise" will also be needed to develop and fix cognitive improvements in the illness. Therefore, we will implement a cognitive remediation routine to test with and without this drug. We will carryout a four cell study (N=15 patients per cell) with atomoxetine or placebo and cognitive remediation or a control condition. We will do an fMRI examination before and after the 8 week trial and neurocognitive testing before and after the treatment. All patients will have stable psychotic symptoms, but symptoms will be assessed anyway. We have begun this trial, already entering 7 volunteers. I will participate in the patient assessment and data gathering steps of the experiment. Since it will take over a year to complete the entire 60 person group, I will not be able to help with the entire study, but I will follow along the experiment, see the data at the end, and participate in writing up aspect of the work.

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:

Dr. Tamminga is new and just setting up her programs here at UTSW. She currently has a Doris Duke Medical Student Fellow Kenneth Youens, who is working on an experiment with the hippocampus and learning and memory in schizophrenia. He already has had one small publication and will probably have one or two more by the end of his year. The group as a whole is productive and will be increasingly so over this next year. The emphasis of the work is clinical translational with a rather basic emphasis. It will provide a good background for any kind of work in psychiatry.

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