LA RIABILITAZIONE NEUROCOGNITIVA IN PAZIENTI AFFETTI DA PSICOSI CON TRAINER COMPUTERIZZATO: IL RUOLO DEL TECNICO DELLA RIABILITAZIONE PSICHIATRICA

Cognitive impairment is common in patients affected by schizophrenia. These affect the autonomy and the social functioning. Main Cognitive damaged areas involve: attention, executive functions, working memory, speech memory, psychomotor coordination and learning skills. The current thesis is that if we can affect cognitive impairment, we can obtain some improvement in social and personal functioning by following rehabilitation programs. Because of the technology progress, cognitive rehabilitation computer assisted programs are developed. Exercises are highly structured and there is the chance of an immediate feedback. Neurocognitive interventions aim at improving cognitive processes through the damaged functions training or letting the brain start balance mechanisms thanks to the preserved functions increase. The repetition of the exercises improves damaged brain areas. This project is a collaboration between a study group of the University of Turin, the School of Medicine Polo San Luigi Gonzaga (To) and the President of the company Brainer ®. Brainer develops training programs for mental stimulation, which have been clinically validated in large population-based studies. The study lasted 12 weeks in which there were three half-an-hour sessions per group performing computer-assisted cognitive training. The aim of the project was to evaluate performance improvement during cognitive testing following computer-assisted training and if the training could have some influence on psycho-social variables which are not directly dealt with during the exercises, but relevant to the patient's Quality of Life (QoL) (e.g., ToM skills, social functioning). We expected that results would shown an improvement in cognitive functions and results showed that patients with psychosis can obtain improvements, even if not statistically significant on psychosocial functioning, by following cognitive rehabilitation computer assisted programs. This improvement supports the necessity of a wider study to strengthening results statistics validity.