Craving & Decision-Making

ConditionDecision Making

Trial statusRecruiting

Trial phaseNot applicable

Trial typeInterventional

Biological sexAll

Age18+

SponsorRutgers, The State University of New Jersey

About this trial

Craving is the strong desire for something, such as for substances in drug addiction and food or other activities in everyday life. Recent work suggests craving can influence how people make decisions and assign value to choice options available to them, yet the neural mechanisms underlying these interactions between craving and valuation remain unknown. To address this, this study uses cognitive decision-making tasks that measure how much individuals will pay (from a study endowment) to have everyday consumer items or snack foods when they crave something specific (opioids or a specific snack, respectively). First, the study will identify the neural mechanisms for how drug craving (craving for opioids) interacts with valuation for consumer items that have associations with drug use or not in people receiving treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). This will be evaluated in the activity patterns and interactions among brain regions involved in craving and value assignment during decision-making. Then, the study will examine for parallel mechanisms for how food craving (craving for a specific snack) interacts with valuation for snack food items that have similar features to the craved snack or not in people receiving treatment for OUD and non-psychiatric community control participants.

Eligibility criteria

This trial accepts healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

At least 18 years of age

Willingness to follow study requirements, as evidenced by an ability to provide written informed consent and read, understand, and complete the study procedures

Minimum of 6th grade reading level

Primary diagnosis of OUD encompassing heroin and/or painkiller use

Disqualifiers

Unable to speak or read English

Active psychosis or mania

Current or past schizophrenia diagnosis

History of intellectual disability or developmental or neurological disorder, seizures or epilepsy, or loss consciousness lasting more than 30 minutes

Trial design

Design model

Single group

Treatments tested in this trial

Audio-visual stimuli (Neutral-Relaxing)
Behavioral
Audio instruction for participant to allow themselves to experience their feelings followed by 3-min passive viewing of images of neutral everyday objects (e.g., tools, dirt) and their use (construction, gardening).
Audio-visual stimuli (Drug)
Behavioral
Audio instruction for participant to allow themselves to experience their feelings followed by 3-min passive viewing of images of drug paraphernalia (e.g., syringe, tourniquet, heroin) and preparation.
Audio-visual stimuli (Non-Food)
Behavioral
Audio instruction for participant to focus their attention on the experimenter followed by 3-min audio-guided viewing of the experimenter opening/unwrapping an everyday object (e.g., box of crayons) and taking out its contents.
Audio-visual stimuli (Food)
Behavioral
Audio instruction for participant to focus their attention on the experimenter followed by 3-min audio-guided viewing of the experimenter opening/unwrapping a snack (e.g., chocolate bar, bag of chips) and taking out its contents.

Treatment groups

160 Participants

are divided into 2 treatment groups

Group A: Consumer Items Willingness-to-Pay TaskExperimental treatment 2 interventions

Group B: Snack Foods Willingness-to-Pay TaskExperimental treatment 2 interventions

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

Willingness-to-pay

The amount that a participant would be willing to pay for different available choice options. This is measured during the decision-making tasks in which participants are shown images of consumer items or snack foods and report how much they would be willing to pay to have the different items in that moment.

Time frame

during the task

fMRI-BOLD activity measured during willingness-to-pay decisions

Functional MRI data will be analyzed to measure changes in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in specific regions of interest based on prior research (ventral striatum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and insula) as participants make willingness-to-pay decisions during each task.

Time frame

during the task

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Lead sponsor

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Collaborator

Source ClinicalTrials.gov

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