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Fear Conditioning Paradigm in Obesity

NCT05768659 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 48

Last updated 2025-08-27

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Fear processing in obesity and specifically the ability to i) learn and remember threatening stimuli, and ii) implicitly (i.e., unconsciously) and explicitly (consciously) discriminate them from neutral ones, will be investigated in affected individuals through the fear-conditioning paradigm.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Fear Conditioning

It is a 2-day paradigm. Participants will undergo an auditory fear conditioning task in 3 phases: (1) pre-conditioning habituation, (2) unconditioned stimulus (US) calibration, where USs will be delivered to set the individual stimulation intensity threshold, and (3) fear conditioning, in which participants will be exposed to the conditioned stimulus (CS) associated with the US with an 80% pairing rate. 24 hours later, the (1) implicit recognition of the CS and novel stimuli (NSs), and the (2) explicit recognition, through an alternative forced-choice task will be assessed. Also, (3) the perceptual discrimination (among the CS and NSs) will be tested. Event-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) will be collected as an implicit index of defensive fear responses, while the accuracy in detecting and discriminating the CS from NSs as the explicit index. Psychological questionnaires about anxiety symptoms will be also administered.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Istituto Auxologico Italiano

    lead OTHER

Eligibility

Min Age
20 Years
Max Age
50 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2022-06-07
Primary Completion
2024-01-10
Completion
2024-01-10

Countries

  • Italy

Study Locations

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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 NCT05768659 on ClinicalTrials.gov