| Background Among the patients with schizophrenia, 98.1% have cognitive impairment, and their high disability rate brings a heavy burden on both individuals and the society. Recently, transcranial direct current stimulation (transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS) has been proved as one of the effective physical therapy methods to improve the cognitive impairment in schizophrenia, and its effect has been reported in extensive literature. Objective To systematically evaluate the feasibility of tDCS stimulation for cognitive impairment in patients with schizophrenia. Methods A randomized controlled study on tDCS stimulation treatment for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia was searched on CNKI, Wanfang database, VIP (Chinese journal service platform), PubMed, CINAHL and PsycINFO related databases, and the time limit was from the establishment of the database to September 2023. The risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane Offset risk tool version 2.0 (Cochrane ROB2.0), using a qualitative systematic review using the thematic synthesis approach.Conclusion The tDCS on executive functions, attention / vigilance, cognitive insight, processing speed, visual attention of mentalizing tasks, planning ability, active cognitive control, attention, social cognition, delayed recall in schizophrenia. It also showed that working memory, information processing speed, attention / vigilance, and delayed recall cognitive fields improved significantly after immediate stimulation, with no significant improvement in space and execution, naming, computational language, abstract force, and executive function was controversial. Most cognitive domains were significantly altered at follow-up after 12 weeks, still maintaining a positive effect after 6 months. |