tDCS and Cognitive Training Intervention for Chronic Smokers With Schizophrenia

Adults with severe mental illness (SMI) are three times more likely to smoke than non-SMI adults, consuming 35-44% of all cigarettes in the U.S.; and, the highest rates of tobacco-related illnesses and death are among smokers with schizophrenia. Unfortunately, not only are patients with schizophrenia less likely to receive smoking treatments, but cessation medications are only modestly effective in helping this subset of smokers quit. Therefore, it is vital to discover new treatment adjuncts that specifically aid this high-risk subset of smokers to achieve successful abstinence. Toward that end, the investigators propose a novel non-pharmacologic technique that directly targets both cognitive impairment, an avenue considerable past research suggests may be particularly effective to exploit in smokers with schizophrenia, and reactivity to prepotent stimuli, shown to be enhanced in smokers with schizophrenia. Combining a subset of cognitive enhancement therapy known as Cognitive Remediation (CR), with another safe and effective technique, Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), the investigators propose a new cognitive training method aimed at enabling smokers with schizophrenia to gain greater control over smoking and stimuli-induced reactivity (e.g., craving). Recent studies have found significant tDCS-induced cognitive enhancement, as well as reduction in both cue-induced craving and smoking behavior among healthy smokers. This combined with knowledge of the cognitive deficits that exist among individuals with schizophrenia, and clear evidence of a relationship between cognitive function and smoking treatment success, provides the rationale for testing novel CR + tDCS to target underlying mechanisms of smoking among individuals with schizophrenia. Specifically, the proposed study will examine the extent to which targeted cognitive enhancement with CR + tDCS, leads to changes in cognitive control, cue-provoked craving, reaction time and ERP measures of attentional bias; as well as the impact of these changes on smoking behavior and intention and confidence to quit among 80 smokers with schizophrenia. The goal of this study is to inform the development of new non-medication, noninvasive, therapeutic techniques to specifically target smoking among patients with schizophrenia. The long term goal is to establish an effective treatment adjunct to help smokers with schizophrenia successfully achieve abstinence.