Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Schizophrenia is a brain disease and serious mental illness affecting approximately 1 in every 100 Canadians (Statistics Canada, 2003). Cognitive deficits are regarded as a central and prominent aspect of schizophrenia. These impairments relate to both the neurobiology of the illness and the ability of patients to function independently in the community (Heinrichs, 2005; Wexler et al., 2008). However, a small number of patients differ from this general pattern and score in the superior range on standard neuropsychological tests. Surprisingly, these patients experience levels of psychopathology as severe as those found in the rest of the patient population (Heinrichs et al., 2008). If psychosis and cognitive performance are dissociable, it is possible their neural mechanisms may also be dissociable. Evidence of distinct patterns of neural activation would suggest the presence of differing disease processes. In order to better understand this important area of research, this study will investigate the nature of cognitive exceptionality in schizophrenia with an eye towards exploiting this anomaly for understanding this serious mental illness. More specifically, this study aims to assess the nature of the relationship between psychopathology and cognitive performance, the extent to which cognitively exceptional patients are free of information processing deficits, the shared and non-shared neural mechanisms underlying cognitively exceptional and more typical schizophrenia patients, and whether cognitive exceptionality manifests similarly in both males and females. It is important to know whether separate disease processes underlie the psychiatric and cognitive expressions of schizophrenia. The comparative study of cognitively exceptional and more typical patients offers the potential for new perspectives and insights into the determinants of this serious mental illness.