Efficacy Study of GA�A Program Cognitive Remediation of Facial Affects Processing in Schizophrenia

Social cognition impairments was highlighted for persons suffering with schizophrenia by numerous studies. The use of treatment programs intended to treat specifically these deficits through procedures of cognitive remediation, will allow decreasing their impact on everyday life by improving abilities to understand and interact with others. Such tools could allow also profits in terms of reduction of positive and negative of schizophrenia. The Gaïa program is intended to improve the perception of the facial affects which is one of social cognition processes impaired in schizophrenia.

Methods:

This is a multicenter, randomized, controlled study comparing people aged 18 to 45 years with a diagnostic of schizophrenia according to the Diagnostic and Statistical manuel of Mental disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV-TR).

The GAÏA program will be compared to an already validated neurocognitive remediation program, training attentional processes (RECOS).

100 patients will be randomized as follows: Arm 1, experimental: Gaïa (20h with therapist, computer assisted method) Arm 2, control: RECOS (20h with therapist, computer assisted method)

Condition: Schizophrenia Intervention: Behavioural: computer assisted cognitive remediation

Hypothesis:

A targeted cognitive remediation will more increased abilities in facial affects recognition processes than a non specific, attentional cognitive remediation.

Primary outcome measures:

- Change from baseline in performances in the Facial Emotion Recognition Task (TREF) after 10 weeks and 20 session of treatment.

Secondary outcome measures

- Change from baseline in clinical, psychosocial, social cognition and neurocognitive measures, after 10 weeks and 20 session of treatment and at 6 months follow-up.
- Change from baseline in performances in the Facial Emotion Recognition Task (TREF) after treatment and 6 months follow-up.