effect of forehead temperature reduction on visual attention accuracy and cognitive status in patients with schizophrenia

Aims: this study aimed to investigate the effect of reducing frontal head temperature on visual attention accuracy and cognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia.materials & methods: this double-blind clinical trial was conducted on 42 hospitalized patients with schizophrenia at shahid rajaee hospital in yasuj, iran. participants were selected through convenience sampling and randomly assigned, using block randomization, to equal intervention and control groups. in the intervention group, prefrontal cortical temperature was lowered, whereas the control group received a sham intervention. the rapid visual information processing test was used to assess visual attention, and the flicker fusion test was applied to evaluate cognitive function. measurements were obtained before and immediately after the intervention. data were analyzed using spss 25 with independent t-tests and repeated-measures anova at a significance level of p<0.05.findings: the mean age of participants was 22.16±2.18 years. no significant demographic differences were found between the groups. after the intervention, the intervention group showed significant improvements in both visual attention and cognitive performance compared with the control group (p<0.001).conclusion: cooling the prefrontal cortex effectively modulates cerebral blood flow and neurophysiological activity, leading to improved attention and cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia.