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Improving Hallucinations by Targeting the rSTS With tES

NCT05165654 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 12

Last updated 2025-09-17

Study results available
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Summary

Hallucinations are a core diagnostic feature of psychotic disorders. They involve different sensory modalities, including auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory hallucinations, among others. Hallucinations occur in multiple different neurological and psychiatric illnesses and can be refractory to existing treatments. Auditory hallucinations and visual hallucinations are found across diagnostic categories of psychotic disorders (schizophrenia, schizoaffective, bipolar disorder). Despite visual hallucinations being approximately half as frequent as auditory hallucinations, they almost always co-occur with auditory hallucinations, and are linked to a more severe psychopathological profile. Auditory and visual hallucinations at baseline also predict higher disability, risk of relapse and duration of psychosis after 1 and 2 years, especially when they occur in combination. Using a newly validated technique termed lesion network mapping, researchers demonstrated that focal brain lesions connected to the right superior temporal sulcus (rSTS) plays a causal role in the development of hallucinations. The rSTS receives convergent somatosensory, auditory, and visual inputs, and is regarded as a site for multimodal sensory integration. Here the investigators aim to answer the question whether noninvasive brain stimulation when optimally targeted to the rSTS can improve brain activity, sensory integration, and hallucinations.

Conditions

Interventions

DEVICE

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation

Transcranial electrical stimulation

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Paulo Lizano, MD, PhD · Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
50 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-11-01
Primary Completion
2025-06-01
Completion
2025-06-23
FDA Device
Yes

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Entities

Diseases
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 NCT05165654 on ClinicalTrials.gov