Consequences of Caffeine Intake in Sleep Restricted Teenagers

Caffeine Clinical Trial

Official title: Consequences of Caffeine Intake in Teenagers: Effects on Sleep, Reward Processing, Risk Taking, and Underlying Cerebral Mechanisms Under Conditions of Sleep Restriction

Status Recruiting

Clinical Trial Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to systematically investigate two prominent factors in teenagers' daily life: Caffeine and sleep restriction (SR) and their combined influence on sleep, cognition, and behavior in healthy adolescents. The main questions it aims to answer are:

The effects of caffeine under conditions of SR and SE:

• on sleep pressure and sleep continuity.

• on BOLD activity differences in reward related areas during a reward task (monetary incentive delay task) and on reaction times (behavioral aspect) in the same task.

• on BOLD activity differences during a risk taking task (wheel of fortune task) and on risky decision-making (behavioral aspect) in the same task.

Participants will be either in the SR or SE condition (between-subject). The protocol consists of 2x of approximately one week in which a participant will receive caffeine or placebo (within-subject) at the last two evenings.

The experiment consists of an ambulatory and a laboratory phase:

• The ambulatory phase consists of 5 nights, including 3 stabilization nights (8h sleep opportunity) prior to 2 nights consisting of either SR with 6h sleep opportunity or SE with 9.5h sleep opportunity. Participants will wear an actiwatch and fill out sleep diaries during this period.

• The laboratory phase will be the 6th evening, night and morning of the protocol and will be spent in our lab. Participants will do the following:

• treatment (caffeine vs. placebo) intake

• saliva sampling

• drug screening

• cognitive tests, including risk-taking and reward task

• filling in questionnaires (sleep diary, sleep quality, sleepiness, mood, expectancy)

• waking and sleep with EEG

The next day, participants will undergo an fMRI scan, including the following:

• resting-state scan

• structural scan

• arterial spin labeling scan

• reward task scan

• risk-taking task scan

Around the scan, participants will fill out/undergo:

• saliva sampling

• questionnaires (reward task, mood, sleepiness, expectancy)

Clinical Trial Description

n/a

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Caffeine
• Sleep Deprivation

• NCT number: NCT05790161
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel
• Contact: Carolin Reichert, Dr.
• Phone: +41 77 488 42 45
• Email: carolin.reichert@upk.ch
• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: March 31, 2023
• Completion date: September 2024