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Human Behaviors Related to the Expectation of Pain

NCT03739645 · Status: TERMINATED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 32

Last updated 2025-05-25

Study results available
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Summary

The conditioned expectation of pain is an important aspect of pain-related disability produced by environments and stimuli associated with a painful injury on the job, although the neuroscience of this expectation is unclear. We will develop and use novel objective methods for measurement of expectation and threat related attention. The results of this study may lead to testable hypotheses regarding the psychological basis of the fear of pain, threat and task related attention. We will also use these results, and development of novel autonomic and ratings metrics for state and trait anxiety as well as threat and task related attention which could be used as an instrumented test for diagnosis and management of PTSD and anxiety disorders. .

Conditions

  • Fear Pain

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Skin conductance levels and slopes over time in conditioned fear as metrics.as metrics for anxiety

After fear conditioning the cue induces autonomic responses like skin conductance and cognitive ratings like expectancy of the unconditioned stimulus after cueing or conditioning. Activity across blocks in the conditioning stage shows that the skin conductance can be described by levels, and slopes which might be related to state anxiety and trait anxiety (Spielberger trait and state anxiety inventory or questionnaire). These skin conductance measures may be concrete metrics for psychological processes in healthy subjects. We will carry out a partial correlation analysis of levels, state anxiety and trait anxiety, and then a similar analysis of slopes, state anxiety and trait anxiety. These results may show that concrete skin conductance levels and slopes are related to metrics of subjective self report measures of state and trait anxiety.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Maryland

    collaborator OTHER

  • National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

    collaborator NIH

  • Johns Hopkins University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Fred A Lenz, MD PhD · Dept of Neurosurgery, Hopkins University.

Study Design

Allocation
NA
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age
16 Years
Max Age
88 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2020-08-01
Primary Completion
2023-10-01
Completion
2023-10-01

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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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 NCT03739645 on ClinicalTrials.gov