Clinical Trial Details
— Status: Not yet recruiting
Administrative data
| NCT number |
NCT06406595 |
| Other study ID # |
Pro00130303 |
| Secondary ID |
|
| Status |
Not yet recruiting |
| Phase |
|
| First received |
|
| Last updated |
|
| Start date |
September 1, 2024 |
| Est. completion date |
April 20, 2025 |
Study information
| Verified date |
May 2024 |
| Source |
University of Alberta |
| Contact |
n/a |
| Is FDA regulated |
No |
| Health authority |
|
| Study type |
Observational
|
Clinical Trial Summary
In this research, the investigators will recruit 2 groups of individuals: older adults (aged
over 65) with anxiety and/or depression and older adults without mental health issues.
Individuals who are eligible to participate in the study based on their score in the
Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI) showing their hand preferences will have the opportunity
to sign up using the online form created by the research team. This experiment will take
place in an electroencephalogram (EEG) lab. Participants will wear an EEG cap with 256
sensors that record their brain activity while completing an emotional oddball task
containing emotional pictures and shapes. The task will take approximately 1 hour with 8
short breaks. EEG is a safe and non-invasive testing technique, and participants will feel
little or no discomfort during this EEG experiment. The goal of this study is to investigate
the effect of fearful emotion on the cognitive oddball task to deepen understanding of the
emotion-cognition interaction in older adults with mental health conditions.
Description:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of fearful emotion on the cognitive
oddball task using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology. The study aims to deepen the
understanding of the emotion-cognition interaction in humans. Emotions are fundamental to
human behavior, and they can have a significant impact on cognitive processes such as
attention, memory, and decision-making. Furthermore, the relationship between emotion and
cognition has been implicated in numerous psychiatric disorders, including anxiety,
depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms by
which emotions affect cognition is essential for the development of effective treatments for
these disorders.
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive and widely-used technique that measures the
electrical activity of the brain, making it an excellent tool for studying the relationship
between emotion and cognition. This study will use EEG to examine the neural correlates of
attentional processing in response to emotional stimuli. Specifically, the investigators will
use an emotional oddball task to investigate the effect of fearful emotions on the attention
of deviant stimuli, which is an established paradigm in the study of emotion and cognition.
Furthermore, this study will explore the impact of the location of the deviant stimuli
presentation (i.e., in the left or right visual field) on the emotion-cognition interaction.
This variable is crucial because previous research has suggested hemispheric asymmetries in
emotion processing and contralateral visual processing. By including this variable in the
study, the investigators will be able to examine whether the emotion-cognition interaction is
influenced by the location of stimulus presentation.
Additionally, the investigators will include 2 groups: older adults with anxiety and/or
depression, and older adults without mental health issues. By examining these different
groups, the investigators aim to elucidate how mental health status may modulate
emotion-cognition interactions.
The inclusion of novel variables, such as the location of stimulus presentation and mental
health status, makes this study innovative and likely to produce novel findings that will
contribute to the existing literature on this topic. It is hypothesized that the presentation
of fearful images in the cognitive oddball task will result in greater changes in brain
electrical activity as compared to neutral images. Specifically, the investigators expect to
observe increased activity in the ventral affective system (e.g., amygdala) and other regions
of the brain associated with emotional processing. The investigators also hypothesize that
the location of the shape presentation (whether on the left or right visual field) may
modulate the effect of emotion on cognition by influencing the event-related potentials
(ERPs) in dorsal executive system (e.g., dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)).
The objectives of this study are:
- To investigate the effect of fearful emotion on the cognitive oddball task using EEG
technology.
- To analyze changes in brain electrical activity in response to fearful and neutral
stimuli.
- To investigate whether the location of shape presentation (left or right visual field)
modulates the effect of emotion on cognition.
- To explore how mental health status may modulate emotion-cognition interactions.
Research Method/Procedures:
Participants who meet the inclusion criteria (strong handedness) will be scheduled for a
one-hour session in the EEG lab. During the session, participants will wear an EEG cap with
256 channels that record their brain electrical activity while they complete an emotional
oddball task. The task will consist of fearful and neutral pictures and black circles that
are shown in the middle, left, or right visual field of the screen. The frequency of shapes
appearing in the left or right visual field will be varied to investigate the impact of
visual field location. The task duration will be approximately 1 hour with 8 short breaks
during the processing.
For data analysis, the investigators will analyze the EEG data using time-frequency analysis
to identify changes in brain electrical activity in response to fearful and neutral stimuli.
The investigators will compare the results of the odd stimulus after fearful images with that
after neutral images to isolate the effect of emotions on cognitive processing. The
investigators will also use statistical analysis to identify any significant differences in
the impact of visual field location on the effect of emotion on cognition. Finally, the
investigators will interpret our findings in the context of existing literature on the
emotion-cognition interaction in humans, and conduct cross-sectional comparisons between
different mental health conditions to investigate the generalizability of the findings.
