Cognitive Improvement After Treatment With Second-Generation Antipsychotic Medications in First-Episode Schizophrenia

The cognitive improvements observed in the trial were consistent in magnitude with practice effects observed in healthy controls, suggesting that some of the improvements in cognition in the first-episode schizophrenia group may have been due to practice effects (ie, exposure, familiarity, and/or procedural learning). Our results also indicated that differential medication effects on cognition were small. We believe that these findings have important implications for drug discovery and the design of registration trials that attempt to demonstrate cognitive enhancement.