1,021 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The goal of this interventional study is to compare if the use of a brain-machine interface (BCI) therapy can improve the symptoms of attentional deficit by producing brain changes in the networks that modulate attention. The investigators intend to work with epileptic participants who do not respond to pharmacological treatment, who will undergo neurosurgery. The questions the study sets out to answer are: 1. is there an improvement of symptoms in an experimental group receiving the treatment versus a sham group receiving a simulation of the treatment? 2. does the application of the therapy before surgery reduce the recovery times of post-surgery cognitive deficits described in the literature? Making use of the information recorded from brain electrodes implanted before a participant's epilepsy surgery, the investigators will create a BCI decoder that works with the available activity sources to establish the level of attention of each participant when performing tasks. Participants: * will perform an offline phase first, which will consist of one day of evaluation, in which they will be familiarized with an attentional task. * will perform a training phase later, which will consist of several days of evaluation, where they will learn to modulate their level of attention. This modulation will be facilitated by the BCI decoder, which will classify the level of attention directly from the brain and provide visual feedback that the participant will use as a guide. If the participant is part of the experimental group (or BCI group), the feedback will work as described and should be easy to follow, but if the participant is part of the Sham group, the feedback will not work according to the brain activity of the actual participant, but according to that of another person. Because of this, a mismatch will be created between the moments a brain experiences inattention, and participants believe they are experiencing inattention. This is a randomized, double-blind study, in which the experimenters will evaluate how the effect of the attentional therapy with BCI affects an BCI group and a Sham group.
The goal of this observational and interventional study is to understand how therapeutic deep brain stimulation (DBS) affects attention, perception and cognition in participants with Parkinson's disease (PD) and essential tremor (ET). The main questions it aims to answer are: * Does impaired control of attention and eye movement in PD alter how social cues are perceived and interpreted? * Does therapeutic DBS improve or worsen attentional and perceptual deficits for social cues in PD and ET? * Can DBS be optimized to restore normal attentional control in PD while remaining an effective therapy for other aspects of the disorder. * What do parts of the brain targeted by DBS contribute to the control of attention? Using an eye tracking camera, investigators will study how participants with PD and ET look at and perceive facial expressions of emotion before and after starting DBS therapy, in comparison to a group of healthy participants without ET, PD or DBS. Participants with PD and ET will see and rate morphed facial expressions on a computer screen in three conditions: * Before starting DBS therapy (over approximately 1 hour). * In the operating room, during the standard procedure to implant DBS electrodes, while the participant is awake (for no more than 15 minutes). * After starting DBS therapy, with brief experimental changes of DBS stimulation level and frequency (over approximately 1 hour).
The investigators are conducting a 10-week brain imaging and medication study. They are doing the research to study the response of Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on extended-release formulation of mixed amphetamine salts (MAS) (also know as Adderall XR). The investigators also want to find out if taking MAS has any effect on the brains of children and adolescents with ADHD and ASD. This study will help researchers better understand how the use of MAS to treat ADHD effects children and adolescents with ASD. The investigators will compare MAS to a placebo. The placebo will look exactly like the MAS capsules but will contain no MAS. During this study, participants may get a placebo instead of MAS. Placebos are used in research studies to see if the study results are due to the study drug or due to other reasons. Participants with ASD and ADHD will complete 4-weeks of treatment with the study medication or placebo. They will complete bi-weekly study visits virtually via a telemedicine platform with the study doctor and complete questionnaires. On alternating weeks, they will meet with a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) study team member to discuss medication adherence and potential side effects. Participants will have the option to attend all study visits in-person if participants prefer. They will also complete baseline and endpoint Magnetic Resonance (MR) scan visits at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During the MR Scan visits, they will complete a series of tasks to measure inattention, impulsivity, reward sensitivity, decision-making, and working memory. Participants without ADHD or ASD will complete eligibility screening with MGH. If eligible, they will be invited to baseline and endpoint MR scan visits at MIT. During the MR Scan visits, they will complete a series of tasks to measure inattention, impulsivity, reward sensitivity, decision-making, and working memory.
The goal of this study is to examine attentional biases for facial displays of emotion as a mechanism of risk in infants of mothers with postpartum major depression, and the potential role of infant arousal in the development of these attentional biases.
This clinical trial aims to evaluate whether transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS), a non-invasive brain stimulation method, can improve attention and memory in veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and depression and/or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study seeks to answer two main questions: 1. Can active taVNS improve attention and memory compared to sham (placebo) stimulation? 2. Does taVNS affect heart rate variability (HRV)? taVNS delivers a gentle electrical current to the vagus nerve through electrodes placed on the ear, targeting brain areas involved in attention and memory without requiring surgery. This study uses a crossover design, meaning all participants will experience two sessions: one with active taVNS and one with sham stimulation. The sham session feels similar but does not deliver actual stimulation, allowing researchers to compare the two and understand taVNS's effects on the brain. In a single visit, participants will: * Complete eligibility screening (questionnaires and vital signs). * Undergo two sessions (one active and one sham), randomly assigned. * Perform attention tasks before and after each session. * Have their heart rate monitored during the sessions. The findings will help determine whether taVNS could be an effective treatment for improving attention and memory in veterans with TBI.
The goal of this study is to investigate the finding that there are large individual differences in how participants move their eyes during active visual search. For example, some individuals tend to fixate, that is point their eyes steadily at a single location, for longer than other individuals before moving to another location. This experiment will use behavioral tasks to measure an individual's attentional and inhibitory functioning, and then see how each of these contributes to between-participant variability in eye movement behavior during visual search.
The goals of the proposed research are to first determine the minimal and/or optimal dose of a digital intervention required for cognitive enhancement, and then to examine the impact of several potential moderators of treatment effects (i.e., cognitive decline, AD polygenic hazard score, cardiovascular risk, and race/ethnicity). This knowledge gained from his high-impact study with transform the field of cognitive interventions, paving the way for a precision medicine model for cognitive enhancing interventions that improve quality of life for older adults and individuals with cognitive deficits at risk of developing dementia.
The current study's goal is to determine if a one-week break from social media in all forms has a beneficial effect on people's attention, as measured by the Sustained Attention to Response Task, executive function as measured by the Stroop test, and well-being.
EEG Measures during Visual Search Task. In this line of research, the researchers having participants receive a positive (target) template cue, negative (distractor) template cue, or neutral (non-informative) template cue. Note: This is a re-analysis of previously collected data.
In this line of research, the researchers are examining a basic science question regarding the working memory representations underlying visual search using a positive template (looking for a target) or a negative template (avoiding a distractor).
In this line of research, the researchers are examining the influence of relevance of a salient item on task performance, depending on overall task set.
The purpose of this study is to help understand how attention processes influence brain engagement during emotion and social cognition. The investigators also want to know if these processes are associated with drinking alcohol. Participation includes three study visits of about 2 hours each over approximately a month. The first visit involves a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan and answering survey questions. Each of the next two visits will involve a session of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS, a non-invasive brain stimulation technique) followed by another MRI scan. People in the Auburn/Opelika area 19 or older are eligible to participate. People who drink alcohol and people who do not drink or don't drink very much are invited to participate.
Older adults demonstrate increased distractibility by task-irrelevant information which contributes to general cognitive impairment. However, it is yet unclear how changes in noradrenergic activity during aging influences attentional control. In the current study, tonic noradrenergic activity will be increased or decreased to investigate its behavioral and neural effects on attentional control.
This study in, healthy human subjects using fMRI and MRS (magnetic resonance spectroscopy) characterizes, how attention and acetylcholine affect visual perception and the brain's representation of the visual environment. Levels of acetylcholine in the cerebral cortex will be enhanced by administration of donepezil, an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase. Half the subjects will receive donepezil and other half will receive placebo.
This pilot study will evaluate the cognitive and behavioral outcomes of using a novel, adaptive attention training in pediatric cancer survivors.
The primary study objectives are to test whether among a sample of healthy adults consuming: (1) a single capsule containing 250 mg citicoline has an effect on attentional performance 1, 2 and 3 h post-dose compared to placebo (acute effect), and (2) capsule containing 250 mg citicoline per day for 28 consecutive days has an effect on attentional performance compared to placebo (chronic effect).
The objective of this study is to determine the effects of electrical brain stimulation (EBS) on visual search in natural scenes in humans.
The investigators are conducting this study to learn more about the cognitive and attentional processes among individuals with three types of repetitive negative thinking (RNT): mental rituals (as seen in obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD), worries (as seen in generalized anxiety disorder, GAD), and ruminations (as seen in major depressive disorder, MDD). Specifically, the investigators are studying whether psychological treatment can help people with RNT who have trouble stopping unwanted thoughts and shifting their attention.
The goal of this study is to evaluate a new method that may influence attention, cravings and substance use called attention training, which will be delivered on a smartphone through an application (app). The study team would like to know what participants think of this new method and to determine if research involving this app is feasible. Eligible participants will use the app for a period of two weeks and attend a total of 4 appointments at our study location.
Despite decades of research, current psychological treatments designed to treat a variety of mental illnesses are not effective for all who receive them. Specifically, well-supported treatments for mental illnesses that involve fear (e.g., PTSD, panic) appear to be effective for the majority of individuals, but consistently leave a group of "treatment non-responders." One potential explanation for the observed discrepancy in treatment response may be the focus of modern psychotherapies on relieving symptoms specific to categorical diagnoses, rather than mechanisms underlying why the individual is experiencing the symptoms. Recently, fear-based psychological disorders (e.g., PTSD, specific phobia, panic disorder, social anxiety) have been identified as sharing a distinct set of biomarkers, including genetic biomarkers of acute fear (i.e., fear in the moment) and impairments in controlling attention. Neurobehavioral interventions are therefore a promising class of treatments designed to target the biological markers that may be maintaining the symptoms of various psychological disorders. The Attention Training Technique (ATT) is a neurobehavioral intervention that has garnered attention through its demonstrated effectiveness in reducing symptoms across a variety of psychological diagnoses. While grounded in well-established theory, the mechanisms of change in ATT are largely unknown. One proposed mechanism may be that ATT promotes functional connectivity between regions in the brain implicated in top-down executive control over attention (ventromedial prefrontal cortex \[vmPFC\] and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex \[dlPFC\]) and bottom-up attention networks (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex \[dACC\] and amygdala), resulting in increased top-down regulation of potentially problematic bottom-up attentional processes. The same brain regions implicated in both top-down and bottom-up attentional processes have also been associated with fear responding (i.e., startle response) and fear learning (i.e., how quickly one learns that a stimuli is safe or to be feared). Taken together, the research suggests that acute fear responding may be decreased through increased executive control over attention through engagement in ATT. The proposed randomized clinical trial will test whether a self-administered brief neurobehavioral intervention (ATT) to increase attentional control will decrease acute fear responding, and whether this change is associated with increased ability to handle attentional interference, an ability associated with normative dACC functioning and measured by behavioral proxy in this study via the Multi-Source Interference Task (MSIT). It is expected that those who engage in ATT will show greater attentional control efficiency, which will decrease their acute fear response. It is also expected that those who engage in ATT will also show lower sensitivity to attentional interference (measured through the MSIT) and will exhibit decreases in their reported fear as their attentional control increases over the course of the intervention. Additionally, it is expected that the intervention (ATT) will indirectly decrease symptoms of categorical fear-based psychological diagnoses through the identified biomarkers (i.e., attentional control, attentional interference sensitivity, acute fear response) to decrease reported symptoms.
Veterans with mild traumatic brain injury continue to deal with symptoms that interfere with their ability to engage in productive activities. In combination with other psychosocial difficulties, impairments are found in cognition, such as attention and executive function. Few interventions are available to treat attention in Veterans with mTBI. Of the interventions available, none rigorously train attention combined with strategy training. This project will innovatively combine a strategy training called Goal Management Training with computerized attention training to improve tests of problem solving, attention and functional tasks compared to a control group.
Childhood obesity is a critical public health problem in the United States. One factor known to contribute to childhood obesity is excess consumption. Importantly, excess consumption related to weight gain is not necessarily driven by hunger. For example, environmental food cues stimulate brain reward regions and lead to overeating even after a child has eaten to satiety. This type of cued eating is associated with increased attention to food cues; the amount of time a child spends looking at food cues (e.g., food advertisements) is associated with increased caloric intake. However, individual susceptibility to environmental food cues remains unknown. It is proposed that the prevalent practice of media multi-tasking-simultaneously attending to multiple electronic media sources-increases attention to peripheral food cues in the environment and thereby plays an important role in the development of obesity. It is hypothesized that multi-tasking teaches children to engage in constant task switching that makes them more responsive to peripheral cues, many of which are potentially harmful (such as those that promote overeating). The overarching hypothesis is that media multi-tasking alters the attentional networks of the brain that control attention to environmental cues. High media multi-tasking children are therefore particularly susceptible to food cues, thereby leading to increased cued eating. It is also predicted that attention modification training can provide a protective effect against detrimental attentional processing caused multi-tasking, by increasing the proficiency of the attention networks. These hypotheses will be tested by assessing the pathway between media-multitasking, attention to food cues, and cued eating. It will also be examined whether it is possible to intervene on this pathway by piloting an at-home attention modification training intervention designed to reduce attention to food cues. It is our belief that this research will lead to the development of low-cost, scalable tools that can train attention networks so that children are less influenced by peripheral food cues, a known cause of overeating. For example, having children practice attention modification intervention tasks regularly (which could be accomplished through user-friendly computer games or cell phone/tablet apps) might offset the negative attentional effects of media multi-tasking.
This study is being done to find out if a new series of evaluations called the SAE (Sensory-Attention-Executive) Battery can help researchers learn more about how cancer treatment does or does not change the way the brain processes/filters information, emotions, attention span, and behavior by comparing the results of the SAE Battery with traditional evaluations like questionnaires.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of a technique designed to improve divided attention and set-shifting impairments in persons with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study is designed to evaluate how well this technique can help people with TBI increase their attention and ability to function better in everyday life.
Background: Attention bias modification training (ABMT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) likely target different aspects of aberrant threat responses in anxiety disorders and may be combined to maximize therapeutic benefit. However, studies investigating the effect of ABMT in the context of CBT have yielded mixed results. Objective: The primary goal of this project is to utilize an enhanced ABMT to target attentional bias towards threat, in addition to classic CBT for anxiety disorders in youth, to determine the efficacy of ABMT in the context of CBT. Study Population: 121 youth (8-17 years old) with a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis Methods: In this sub-study, * Participants will receive open CBT treatment. * Open CBT treatment will be augmented with computer-based attention retraining, delivered in a randomized-controlled design, with random assignment to either active or placebo attention-training regimens. * This enhanced ABMT integrates a modified dot-probe task used in previous studies, where a target is always presented at the previous location of the neutral and not the simultaneously presented threatening stimulus, with a visual search, where the targets are always presented distally of threatening distractors. * These two training elements (modified dot-probe and visual search) will be embedded in an engaging game to foster motivation and adherence. Outcome: Symptom improvement will be compared between the two study arms.
Problems with distraction are widespread in the 21st century, but for people with developmental delays or behavioral challenges they can have more damaging effects. For example, susceptibility to distraction is associated with worse school and social performance, lower high school graduation rates, and increased incidence of serious accidents. The investigators' goal is to improve understanding of distractibility and develop a targeted treatment. The proposed intervention is based on models of habituation, which is a term that means reduced physiological and emotional response to a stimulus (e.g. moving object, or loud noise, etc.) as it is seen repeatedly. The investigators use virtual reality technology to show study participants distracting stimuli repeatedly in a virtual classroom setting, and their hypothesis states that participants will improve attention in the face of distraction by training with this technology intervention. The virtual classroom setting is especially relevant for children who have significant challenges with distractibility, such as children with ADHD. This intervention will likely be effective in helping individuals with other clinical disorders and perhaps the general population as well.
This project will evaluate the neuro-cognitive outcomes of a novel, adaptive attention training in a healthy adolescent population.
Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChE-I) comprise a class of drugs used to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD), but controversy about their usefulness remains. Modest response rates of treated versus placebo groups, small effect sizes with respect to efficacy, drug costs, and clinical relevance of the effects are problematic. Standard efficacy measures of efficacy are not sufficiently sensitive, and trying to assess cognitive change after 4-6 months of therapy confounds the drug effect and the natural progression of the disease. Surprisingly, attention has never been included in the assessment of AChE-I drugs. The rationale for using attentional measures are that (1) Attentional deficits are recognized as a critical cognitive change in the earliest phases of AD; (2) Attentional function is directly mediated by the cholinergic system, and responds rapidly to cholinergic augmentation, particularly on tasks that tax available attentional capacity are dose dependent; and (3) Acetylcholine is depleted in AD. However, the link between attention and cholinergic depletion in AD has not been fully explored, especially with regard to response to cholinergic treatment. The study tests if attentional performance can be a more sensitive marker of response. In a longitudinal study we measure attentional, as well as cognitive and behavioral performance in de novo AD patients undergoing donepezil treatment. The investigators develop visual attentional measures and contrast them to global and domain-specific cognitive scores on three occasions (T1) baseline pre-treatment, (T2) after approximately 6 weeks, and (T3) after 6 months treatment. The T1-to-T2 arm is a double-blind placebo control period, after which members of the placebo group start open-label treatment. The assessment at 6 months allows us to determine whether the changes seen earlier at T2 can predict patients who respond, or determine which measures best predict response. We hypothesize that attention measures are more sensitive than standard global measures or other cognitive domains and that the change of attentional function can be detected after only after approximately 6 weeks treatment. Knowledge from this project will facilitate and inform our decisions about individual patients undergoing pharmacological treatment.
The purpose of this study is to refine a new assessment tool for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and then to test its validity (i.e. ability to discriminate between individuals with ADHD and healthy controls.
The purpose of this study is to determine if priming attention prior to practicing a motor task will have an effect on the ability to acquire and learn that motor task. The investigators hypothesize that the acquisition and learning of a motor task will improve if attention is primed prior to practicing that motor task when compared to a group who does not receive the prime.