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Development and Validation of Learning and Decision-Making Tasks

NCT05707806 · Status: RECRUITING · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 550

Last updated 2026-03-27

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Background:

Substance use disorders (SUD) can be considered disorders in the way people process incentives, learn, and make decisions. To understand why some people develop SUD, researchers need to develop reliable tests that show how people think and learn. This natural history study seeks to develop a set of tasks that could then be used to test how people learn and make decisions.

Objective:

To develop and validate behavioral tasks that could be used in future studies.

Eligibility:

Healthy people aged 18-45 years from the Baltimore area. They must also be enrolled in the NIDA screening protocol.

Design:

Participants will perform different tasks. Most tasks require 1-4 study visits; some may require up to 12. Visits are 1-14 days apart. All visits will last about 1-7 hours.

Participants will perform tasks on a computer. As they work they may be given different stimuli:

Smells. Participants will sniff odors through a plastic tube or mask on their nose.

Flavors. Participants will wear a mouthpiece and small amounts of different flavored liquids will be placed in their mouth.

Pictures. Participants will look at different images.

Sounds. Participants will wear headphones and various sounds will be played for them.

Food. Participants may be asked to eat a meal before, during, or after a task. The researchers will provide the meal.

During each task, participants will wear sensors to monitor their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and other physical changes in their bodies.

Some participants will have a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. They will lie on a table that slides into a cylinder. They will perform tasks on a computer screen during the fMRI.

Conditions

  • Normal Physiology

Interventions

DEVICE

MRI

Enables the use of custom pulse sequence

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

    lead NIH

Principal Investigators

  • Thorsten Kahnt, Ph.D. · National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Eligibility

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

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2023-03-29
Primary Completion
2032-12-31
Completion
2032-12-31

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 NCT05707806 on ClinicalTrials.gov