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ADIE-FS - Aligning Dimensions of Interoceptive Experience in Patients With Functional Seizures

NCT06105996 · Status: RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 20

Last updated 2024-03-04

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Functional seizures are common and harmful. They look like epileptic seizures but are not caused by the excess electrical discharges in the brain that arise in epilepsy. Our understanding of the mechanisms that give rise to functional seizures is limited, and for this reason the development of novel treatments for functional seizures is also limited. Recent research by our and other groups has shown that interoception may play an important role in the development of functional seizures. Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets and integrates information from inside the body. Research has shown that altered interoception is linked to functional seizures. We have shown that patients with functional seizures have a reduced ability to accurately identify signals from within their bodies, such as their heartbeats. The worse their ability, the greater their seizure severity and higher their levels of other unwanted symptoms. In separate research other groups have shown that interoceptive training, that is actively training an individual to better recognise signals from their body, can reduce levels of anxiety and the levels of unwanted symptoms. In this study we therefore plan to explore the feasibility of interoceptive training in patients with functional seizures.

Conditions

  • Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures
  • Dissociative Seizures
  • Psychogenic Pseudoseizure
  • Functional Neurological Disorder
  • Non Epileptic Seizure

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Interoceptive training

There will be 6 interoceptive training sessions carried out over two months. Each training session will comprise two blocks, between which participants will undergo a self-paced, light physical activity that aims to enhance heartbeat perception and lasts 2 to 3 minutes. During the pre- and post-exercise block, each participant will complete cardiac interoceptive tasks, and for each trial, note their confidence in their answer on a visual analogue scale and then be given accurate feedback about their objective heartbeat perception accuracy and the accuracy of their subjective confidence rating, relative to their objective accuracy.

Sponsors & Collaborators

Principal Investigators

  • Mahinda Yogarajah, PHD · UCL/UCLH

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-01-10
Primary Completion
2024-05-01
Completion
2024-05-01

Countries

  • United Kingdom

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 NCT06105996 on ClinicalTrials.gov