Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia present cognitive impairment in addition to positive and negative symptoms. Cognitive impairment of schizophrenia (CIS) is a distinct symptom, and is independent of motivation or general intelligence. Cognitive domains affected in schizophrenia include verbal learning memory, verbal fluency, attention, and executive function. Since CIS influences functional outcomes, pharmacotherapy and psychosocial approaches have been tested to enhancement cognition. However, the effect sizes of these treatments have been small, and side effects and/or the need of considerable human resources poses major challenges. For these reasons, non‐invasive brain stimulation methods, e. g., transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) , are attracting interest as a feasible and safe treatment. In this paper, we provide an overview of tDCS and its ability to alleviate CIS.
