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Neural Mechanisms of Cost and Benefit Integration During Decision-Making, Aim 2: Acute & Lifetime Stress

NCT04060966 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 397

Last updated 2023-07-25

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The central aim of this study is to characterize how the costs of acute and lifetime stress affect the neural architecture for decision-making in healthy humans. Investigators will use behavioral choice paradigms to measure how the costs of stress influence decisions about rewards (e.g., foods, money) as well as decisions about the use of self-control strategies. They will further examine associations between these stress measures and other decision variables commonly studied in our lab which have well-understood mechanisms, such as risk preferences. This behavioral work lays the foundation for an fMRI experiment that combines our measures of the behavioral costs of stress with neural measures of brain changes. Acute stress will be measured using a physiological stressor (cold-pressor task) coupled with saliva sample collection for cortisol analysis. Lifetime stress will be measured using a computerized life stress survey. We will study three cohorts: One purely behavioral cohort will be examined on-site (n=60). In a smaller subset of participants (n=40), investigators will measure neural activity changes in relevant brain areas as measured with MRI during decisions to use self-control in the presence of rewards. In a larger sample (n=500) the correlation between participants' risk preferences and lifetime stress exposure at scale using Amazon Mechanical Turk subjects will be measured.

Conditions

  • Healthy

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Cold-Pressor Task (CPT)

The CPT involves participants submerging their dominant forearm in ice-water (0-4°C) for 3 minutes.

BEHAVIORAL

Control CPT

The control CPT involves participants submerging their dominant forearm in warm water (\~30°C) for 3 minutes.

DEVICE

fMRI

Participants in the neuroimaging cohort will complete up to two fMRI experimental sessions on different days, with at least a day between sessions, each lasting approximately 2 hours. Imaging data will be collected with a Prisma 3T head- only scanner equipped with a head coil from Nova Medical.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Paul Glimcher, PhD · New York Langone Health

Eligibility

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

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2019-05-01
Primary Completion
2022-08-01
Completion
2022-08-01

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Companies

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 NCT04060966 on ClinicalTrials.gov