The Disrupted Bodily Self of Patients
Trial statusNot yet recruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age20-85
SponsorUniversity of Geneva, Switzerland
About this trial
Some pathological clinical conditions can strongly perturb the link between body and self. One disorder of body representation is the feeling of disownership over body parts, experienced by neurological patients usually after a stroke affecting the right hemisphere. Body disownership and more complex somatoparaphrenic delusions are described as rare in the scientific literature and no clear consensus about their features, brain correlates and recovery mechanisms are on record. Recently, the investigators have discovered that using new sensitive tools it is possible to unveil the presence of covert disownership deficits in patients, who seemed completely unimpaired at the standard assessment. Within a bigger exploratory study of this covert disownership in stroke patients, the aim is to implement a proof-of-concept rehabilitation study, using a multisensory stimulation paradigm, with the hypothesis that a positive remission of disownership will be found and that this treatment can influence both the implicit and explicit features of disownership.
Eligibility criteria
This trial does not accept healthy volunteersQualifiers
First neurological event, affecting the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere (stroke);
Structural images of the brain lesion available (magnetic resonance or tomographic scans);
Full somato-sensory deficit affecting the left hand;
Good (or corrected) visual acuity;
Disqualifiers
Failure to meet the inclusion criteria ;
Presence of general cognitive deficits and/or suspicious of possible cognitive deficits;
Presence of difficulty in task's comprehension;
Impossibility to sustain a research session of at least 45minutes (e.g., attentional lability);
Trial design
Design model
Crossover
Treatments tested in this trial
Visuo-tactile stimulation
BehavioralThe patient will place both hands on a table in front of him/her, seeing only the left one disown. A visuo-tactile stimulation will be done, with the right (out of view, but perceiving the tactile stimulation) and left (in full view, but with somato-sensory deficits, therefore not feeling the stimulation) hands touched with a paintbrush for five minutes.
Treatment groups
5 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groupsGroup A: Asynchronous StimulationSham comparator 1 intervention
Group B: Synchronous StimulationExperimental treatment 1 intervention
Trial outcomes
Primary outcomes
1
Change in the visual analog scale (VAS) score about covert disonwership of the left hand
Just before and after each stimulation, we will use a VAS to monitor if the patients modify their sense of body (dis)ownership. Range: 0-21cm, 0= worst score (feeling of disownership), 21= better score (feeling of ownership)
Time frame
from Baseline to 15 minutes2
Effect size of the implicit association test (IAT)
Just before and after each stimulation, we will use the experimental body IAT to monitor if patients modify their implicit awareness of the body. We will use the effect size score, which combine the reaction times of the congruent and incongruent categories, plus the errors made, into a unique score following a standard previously published algorithm.
Time frame
from Baseline to 1 hourLocations
Sponsors and contacts
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Source ClinicalTrials.gov
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