the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tdcs) on improving attention in women with chronic schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the most common and severe psychiatric disorders that is characterized by abnormalities in perception, behavior, motivation, thinking and cognition. one of these cognitive defects is defect in attention. therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tdcs) on improving attention in women with chronic schizophrenia in 2016, ardabil, iran. in this experimental study (pre-test and post-test with a control group), the population included all women with chronic schizophrenia in ardabil-iran, and 28 participants were randomly selected who were in rehabilitation centers of ardebil and randomly divided into an experimental group (n=14) and a control group (n=14). the members of both groups were individually subjected to a pre-test using toulouse pieron attention test, then using tdcs the intervention was individually performed by a trained researcher on the experimental group for 10 consecutive days in 20 minutes with anode, fp2, and the cathode. the post-test was administered on both experimental and control groups. to analyze the data, univariate covariance analysis was used. the results showed that tdcs increased the mean scores of attention (p < .05) in subjects with chronic schizophrenia. considering that tdcs has a significant effect on improving the attention of people with chronic schizophrenia, it can be concluded that tdcs can improve the attention of people with chronic schizophrenia.