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Quantitative Sensory Testing to Study Pain Perception in Autism

NCT06659731 · Status: RECRUITING · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 50

Last updated 2024-10-26

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

This study aims at assess sensory perception, and pain perception, in neurodivergent children and adolescent in the autism spectrum. To achieve this goal, the quantitive sensory testing (QST), a controlled and replicable protocol, will be used, to assess perception in different sensory modalities: heat sensations, mechanical detection threshold and pain threshold. As secondary aim, the cortical processing of thermal painful stimuli will be collected through electroencephalography (EEG) in order to investigate if there are differences in the cortical processing of painful stimuli between clinical sample and control sample, and if it could be associated with differences in the subjective experience between the two groups. Finally, it will be explored the association between such differences, and indexes of psychopathology and dispositional measures.

Conditions

  • Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
  • Pain Perception

Interventions

OTHER

Quantitative Sensory testing (QST)

The QST protocol (Rolke et al., 2006; Blankenburg et al., 2010), implies the administration of 7 short sensory test in order to measure up to 13 parameters, which can be grouped as follows: thermal detection thresholds for the perception of cold, warm and paradoxical heat sensations, thermal pain thresholds for cold and hot stimuli, mechanical detection thresholds for touch and vibration, mechanical pain thresholds and sensitivity for pinprick and blunt pressure, vibration detection threshold and pressure pain threshold.

OTHER

EEG

EEG recording at rest and while receiving heat stimuli to study cortical processing of salient thermal stimuli. Up to 30 painful thermal stimuli, will be delivered to the patients' hand dorsum in order to register contact heat evoked potentials (CHEPs).

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • IRCCS Eugenio Medea

    lead OTHER

Eligibility

Min Age
5 Years
Max Age
17 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2024-07-17
Primary Completion
2025-07-31
Completion
2025-09-30

Countries

  • Italy

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 NCT06659731 on ClinicalTrials.gov