About this trial
Background:
Negative emotional states can affect a person s behavior as they make decisions. For example, hunger may make people more impatient; they may then make riskier choices. Other negative emotional states that can change behavior include stress, pain, and sadness. By learning more about how emotions affect thinking and behavior in healthy people, researchers hope to better understand how to identify and treat people with mental disorders.
Objective:
To learn how negative emotions affect the brain and decision-making behavior.
Eligibility:
Healthy people aged 18 to 55 years.
Design:
Participants will have 3 clinic visits in 3 weeks.
Participants will fill out questionnaires. They will be asked about their personal history, their personality, and state of mind.
For 2 visits, participants will be assigned to different groups. Each group will experience 1 type of emotional stressor:
Some participants will watch a video.
Some will have to do arithmetic problems.
Some will have heat applied to an arm or leg.
Some will experience cold by immersing their hand in ice water.
For a snack craving test, some will be tempted by food after a 4-hour fast.
During these tests, participants will have sensors attached to their bodies. They will be videotaped. Saliva samples will be collected.
After the stressors, participants will do tasks on a computer. They will need to make choices.
Some participants will perform these decision-making tasks while lying in a brain scanner for functional magnetic resonance imaging. The brain scan involves lying on a table that slides into a cylinder that takes images of the brain.
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Eligibility criteria
Qualifiers
Ability of subject to understand and the willingness to sign a written informed consent document.
All sexes; Age 18 to 55.
Able to read and write in English to guarantee understanding of all written and spoken instructions, which are in English.
Disqualifiers
Unable to comply with study procedures or follow-up visits
Has any serious or unstable medical condition or history that in a clinician s assessment implies a cardiovascular, neurological, or physical risk from the study procedures performed to induce negative valence states. This may include chronic systemic disorders that could worsen due to stress (e.g. uncontrolled hypertension, coronary artery disease for example a history of myocardial infarction or stable or unstable angina, or diabetes)
Has any current psychiatric diagnosis (based on SCID or the MINI Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview) or no diagnosis but scores >=29 on Beck Depression Inventory II or >=26 on Beck Anxiety Inventory
Meets criteria for diagnosis of any substance-related or addictive disorder, or endorses any kind of problematic gambling behavior or problematic media-based addictive behavior (such as videogames, social-networking, online shopping, etc.)
Trial design
Treatments tested in this trial
- Pain
- Stress
- Craving
- Frustration
- Negative valence emotion