Manipulating Social Percepts During fMRI

Official title

Manipulating Social Percepts With Real-Time fMRI

Overview

This study will investigate the use of real-time fMRI to change how participants perceive social information.

Detailed description

The investigators have previously established stable individual differences in how people accumulate evidence for the presence and nature of a social interaction in visual displays, termed "social tuning curves". Taking individuals with deeply characterized neural and behavioral social tuning curves, this protocol will covertly manipulate percepts in two ways using real-time fMRI: 1) brain-state-triggered trials to bias participants toward a given percept based on their pre-stimulus brain state, and 2) implicit neurofeedback prior to and during stimulus exposure to teach participants to control their brain activity in social-perceptual circuits. These experiments will directly test causal relationships between activity at different levels of the cortical hierarchy and an individual's ultimate percept of a given social stimulus.

Interventions

• Other Real-time fMRI: Brain-state- triggered trials
  During each fMRI session, we will monitor subjects' brain activity in real time and use univariate and/or multivariate activity patterns to trigger trial presentation. For each individual, we will select three regions: one key region early in the cortical hierarchy (e.g., MT), one key region late in the cortical hierarchy (e.g., anterior temporal), and one control region that does not show strong tuning to social information (e.g., primary auditory). These regions will be functionally defined fo
• Other Real-time fMRI: Covert neurofeedback
  Neurofeedback is a type of biofeedback that uses real-time displays of brain activity in an attempt to teach subjects to self-regulate their brain function. Here we will use implicit neurofeedback, meaning that subjects will see a feedback signal, but will not be told what that feedback signal represents (i.e., which brain region) or what the expected effects of learning to control that brain region might be. This type of neurofeedback is less prone to suggestibility and other confounding effect

Primary outcome measures

• Likelihood of certain social percepts (behavioral) [Time frame: during fMRI session]

Secondary outcome measures (1)

• Control over brain activity (fMRI-based) [Time frame: during fMRI session]

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria

• willingness and availability to come for a total of 6 MRI scan sessions
• good fMRI data quality in previous, non-clinical trial study, including low head motion, high vigilance during the task as measured via simultaneous eye tracking, consistent behavioral responses

Exclusion criteria

• metallic objects in body contraindicated for the MRI scanner
• history of severe psychiatric or neurological disease
• currently on medication for a psychiatric condition
• illicit drug use
• claustrophobia
• heavy nicotine or alcohol use
• prior head injury
• pregnancy

Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.

Healthy volunteers: Yes

Study design

Observational model

Other

Study locations

Center list to be confirmed — check the primary protocol.

Identifiers

NCT: NCT07528378 · STUDY00032009 · R01MH129648

Primary sources (government registries)

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US NIH)

View this study on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗