The Role of the Locus Coeruleus in Age-related Distractibility

Part of paid clinical trials in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Sponsor
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Study ID
NCT05574634
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
18 Years - 75 Years
Healthy Volunteers
Accepted

Interventions

  • Tablet based adaptive multimodal attention practice program — BEHAVIORAL
    An adaptive at-home tablet-based program that includes variants of the Flanker Task, the Stroop Task, and a Visual Tracking Task. Each session of practice will include up to ten minutes with each of these task types, and the tasks will increase in difficulty in a way that further taxes attention (such as through more distractors or more incongruent trials) as participant performance improves.
  • Tablet based adaptive criterion task practice program — BEHAVIORAL
    An adaptive, at-home tablet-based variant of the criterion task, that is, the selective attention/distraction task used during the scanning portion of the human participant portions of the study, that takes up to 25 minutes to complete each session.

Study Details

A growing body of research has highlighted the importance of frontal regions, at both the functional and structural levels, in age-related declines in attentional and cognitive processing. However, the underlying neurobiological pathophysiological changes in the brain that contribute to these declines are still largely unclear. The objective of this proposal is to investigate neural mechanisms of age-related attentional distractibility, focusing on the neural circuit initiated from the locus coeruleus (LC). In the current proposal, the investigators will test the hypothesis that the neural disconnectivity of LC with the salience network (SN) drives failures of ignoring distractors in older adults. The investigators will examine how LC-SN connectivity is associated with selective attention performance, and how improved LC-SN connectivity through a cognitive training program may lead to improved attentional performance.

Key Dates

Start date
Apr 11, 2023
Status verified
Aug 2025
Primary completion
Jun 30, 2027
Completion
Jun 30, 2027

Study Design

Enrollment
200 participants (estimated)
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE

Arms

  • Experimental: Older adult participants
    Older adult participants in the study will complete one of two variants of an attention practice program and that will be preceded by, and followed by, an fMRI scan session featuring an attention task
  • No Intervention: Younger adult participants
    Younger adult participants in the study will complete one fMRI scan session featuring an attention task

Primary Outcome Measure

Change in accuracy on the place-face selective attention task after two weeks [ Time Frame: Scan before and after attentional practice (2 weeks between scans) ]

Central Contacts

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityBlacksburgVirginia24061
Tae-Ho Lee, PhD
[email protected]
540-231-6174
Benjamin Katz, PhD
[email protected]
540-231-9816

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