MedTrace Logo

Neurobiological Mechanisms of Aging and Stress on Prospective Navigation

NCT03896529 · Status: RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 85

Last updated 2026-04-17

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Two hallmarks of both healthy aging and age-related disease are 1) memory and navigational deficits, particularly in orienting towards goal locations and planning how to navigate to them, and 2) increased susceptibility to stress and altered regulation of the stress response. However, there are marked individual differences in these age-related changes. The investigators' proposal will help characterize factors that contribute to this variability.

Participants will be pseudorandomly assigned to stress-manipulated or control groups. The investigators will give both groups a novel immersive navigation task, validated by the PI in healthy young adults. This paradigm gives participants the opportunity to either (a) flexibly draw on spatial memory in order to plan efficient routes to goal locations, or (b) fall back on inefficient, but cognitively less-demanding, stimulus-response associations (i.e., habits). Using neuroimaging and behavioral measures, the investigators' protocol will test whether experimentally-induced stress leads individuals to bring fewer details about future locations to mind when route planning, and whether such restricted prospective thought ultimately biases participants towards relatively inflexible, habitual actions.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Anticipatory psychological stress

Unpredictable delivery of low-level electrical stimulation to left ankle periodically throughout psychology tasks (virtual navigation). Established procedure for inducing anticipatory stress.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute on Aging (NIA)

    collaborator NIH

  • Georgia Institute of Technology

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Thackery I Brown, Ph.D. · Georgia Institute of Technology

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
65 Years
Max Age
80 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2019-09-24
Primary Completion
2026-09-01
Completion
2026-09-01

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

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 NCT03896529 on ClinicalTrials.gov