Innovative methods for improving cognition, motivation and wellbeing in schizophrenia

Neuropsychiatric disorders involve impairment of cognition, motivation and their interaction1. Cognitive manifestations include attentional biases, aberrant learning, dysfunctional reward processing, and lack of top‐down cognitive control by the prefrontal cortex. These cognitive manifestations are both “cold” or non‐emotional and “hot” or social and emotional2. From a neurobiological perspective, these relate to two partially segregated loops: the “cold” loop including the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and the “hot” affective loop including the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum, with strong connections to the “emotional brain” including the amygdala2