UIC Department of Psychiatry

This research is being done so we can better understand the effects of hormones and gender on mental abilities and symptoms in schizophrenia. Research suggests that men and women excel at different mental abilities. For instance, on average, men generally outperform women on tests requiring them to learn and remember a map, and women generally outperform men on tests requiring them to say a series of words quickly. Research studies suggest that the hormones estrogen and testosterone influence performance on those tasks. We are conducting similar studies in people with and without schizophrenia to better understand how the condition might affect mental abilities in men and women with the disease. To understand how estrogen effects memory in schizophrenia we need to know how hormones typically affect mental abilities in healthy volunteers.

Thus, the purpose of this research is to determine whether men and women with schizophrenia show differences in mental abilities and whether those mental abilities change in women as levels of estrogen change across the menstrual cycle. Recruitment for this study is currently closed.