Individuals with schizophrenia exhibit widespread cortical thinning associated with illness severity and deficits in cognition. However, intact cortical thickness (CTh) may serve as a protective factor. The current study sought to examine changes in CTh in response to auditory targeted cognitive training (TCT) in individuals with recent onset schizophrenia. Participants underwent MRI scanning and a cognitive assessment before and after being randomly assigned to 40 h of either TCT (N = 21) or a computer games control condition (CG; N = 22) over 16 weeks. Groups did not differ at baseline on demographic variables or measures of CTh. At the level of group averages, neither group showed significant pre-post changes in CTh in any brain region. However, changes in CTh related to individual differences in treatment outcome, as improved global cognition in the TCT group corresponded to reduced cortical thinning in frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes. These relationships were not observed in the CG group. The current findings suggest that TCT may be neuroprotective in early schizophrenia, such that individuals who improved in response to training also showed a reduction in cortical thinning that may be otherwise hastened due to age and illness.

精神分裂症患者表现出与疾病严重程度和认知缺陷相关的广泛皮质变薄。然而，完整的皮质厚度 (CTh) 可以作为一个保护因素。目前的研究试图检查近期发作的精神分裂症患者 CTh 对听觉靶向认知训练 (TCT) 的反应变化。参与者在被随机分配到 40 小时的 TCT（ N  = 21）或电脑游戏控制条件（CG；N ）之前和之后接受了 MRI 扫描和认知评估 = 22) 超过 16 周。各组在人口统计变量或 CTh 测量的基线上没有差异。在组平均值水平上，两组均未显示任何大脑区域中 CTh 的显着前后变化。然而，CTh 的变化与治疗结果的个体差异有关，因为 TCT 组整体认知的改善对应于额叶、颞叶、顶叶和枕叶的皮质变薄减少。在 CG 组中未观察到这些关系。目前的研究结果表明，TCT 可能对早期精神分裂症具有神经保护作用，因此对训练反应有所改善的个体也表现出皮质变薄减少，否则可能会因年龄和疾病而加速。