Imaging During Subliminal Perception

Healthy Clinical Trial

Official title:

Functional Imaging During Subliminal Perception

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04643340
• Other study ID #: 2017-00483
• Status: Completed
• Start date: March 15, 2020
• Est. completion date: December 1, 2022

Study information

• Verified date: June 2023
• Source: University of Zurich
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

Subliminal perception of visual stimuli can be studied with functional brain imaging, e.g. with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, it is unclear how subliminal perception affects connectivity in the brain.

Further, it is not known if real-time (rt) fMRI neurofeedback of brain areas involved in subliminal perception can lead to supra-threshold perception.

For attention tasks, the investigators hypothesize that functional connectivity strength is mediated by the insular cortex during both supra-threshold and subliminal perception.

Additionally, the investigators hypothesize that rt-fMRI neurofeedback training should alter neuronal and behavioral responses.

Description:

In this project, using healthy adults, the investigators have 2 aims:

1. Apply electroencephalography (EEG) and fMRI before and after rt-fMRI neurofeedback during attention tasks to identify brain regions involved in subliminal and supraliminal perception.

2. Apply functional connectivity analyses during these tasks.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 70
• Est. completion date: December 1, 2022
• Est. primary completion date: December 1, 2021
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 80 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Healthy adults (> 18 < 80 years), which can read and sign the informed consent form

• Male and female

• Right-handed

Exclusion Criteria:

• metallic items in the body (i.e. eye splinter, MR incompatible implants)

• pacemaker

• claustrophobia

• pregnant participants

• participants suffering from a degenerative disorder of the Central Nervous System, such as Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease and Huntington's Disease and with major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, or anxiety disorder

• Drug intake (psychopharmaca)

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Healthy

Intervention

Other:
• real-time fMRI
Brain regions can be trained, i.e. fMRI activity can be actively modulated online by humans, using rt-fMRI (Bruhl, Scherpiet et al. 2014, Bruhl 2015, Emmert, Kopel et al. 2016).

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Switzerland	University of Zurich	Zürich

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Zurich	Swiss National Science Foundation

Country where clinical trial is conducted

Switzerland, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	fMRI during supra-threshold and subliminal perception		2020 - 2022
Primary	rt-fMRI activity	rt-fMRI activity: fMRI signal changes during repetitive real time fMRI based training	2020 - 2022
Secondary	Functional connectivity	Examination of fMRI signal dependencies (coherence) between brain regions.	2020 - 2022
Secondary	EEG activity	EEG activity: Event related potentials and spectral band power for different trial types	2020 - 2022
Secondary	fMRI task performance	Reaction time and accuracy	2020 - 2022

External Links

•   SNF database