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Pramipexole and Emotional Processing

NCT03681509 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 43

Last updated 2020-03-24

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The dopamine agonist pramipexole has recently been suggested as a potential novel antidepressant drug. While preliminary clinical data hint at its efficacy in treating depressive symptoms, our current understanding of its impact on neurocognitive processes is relatively limited. This is in part because mechanistic studies have largely focused on the effects of single-dose treatments. However, such acute administration of dopaminergic drugs likely has different cognitive effects than the more prolonged administration that is used clinically. This study therefore aims to explore and characterise the neurocognitive effects of more prolonged pramipexole treatment. Forty healthy volunteers will be randomly allocated to 12 to 15 days of treatment with either pramipexole or placebo. Study participants as well as researchers will be blinded as to which treatment is used. Before and after treatment all participants will perform a set of psychological tasks and questionnaires evaluating reward-based learning, emotional information processing, motivational vigour and subjective experience. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to compare neural activity during emotion and reward processing between the two treatment groups. We hypothesises that pramipexole might enhance reward sensitivity, motivational vigour, and pleasure experience and could induce positive biases in emotional information processing.

Conditions

  • Emotions
  • Motivation
  • Reward
  • Dopamine

Interventions

DRUG

Pramipexole

Pramipexole

DRUG

Placebo

Lactose placebo capsule

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Oxford

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Michael Browning, MB.BS · University of Oxford

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
TRIPLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
45 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2018-09-01
Primary Completion
2019-11-01
Completion
2019-11-01

Countries

  • United Kingdom

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Drugs

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT03681509 on ClinicalTrials.gov