Health TrialsbyHealthPanel

The Power of Belief: Expectation-driven and Placebo Modulation of Empathic Pain

ConditionHealthy Participants
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age18-30
SponsorUniversity of Electronic Science and Technology of China

About this trial

This study investigates how belief and expectation influence empathic pain-the pain we feel when observing others in distress. Healthy adult participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: no-treatment control, placebo nasal spray, oxytocin-containing nasal spray. Participants in both the placebo and oxytocin conditions will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief. During functional MRI scanning, all participants will view naturalistic pain-related videos and provide ratings of perceived subjective pain. The study aims to examine how cognitive beliefs and neuromodulatory interventions alter subjective pain experience and brain activity, including changes in brain network communication.

Eligibility criteria

This trial accepts healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

(1) Healthy subjects without any past or present psychiatric or neurological disorders; (2) Healthy subjects without any current psychotherapeutic medication.

Disqualifiers

(1) Participant with any past or present psychiatric or neurological disorders; (2)Participant with any current psychotherapeutic medication.

Trial design

Design model

Parallel

Treatments tested in this trial

  • Intranasal Oxytocin (OT) 24 IU

    Drug

    Administer oxytocin (24 IU) intranasally, 6 individual 0.1 ml puffs (4 IU/0. 1ml), three puffs per nostril one every 30 seconds. The participants will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief.

  • Intranasal placebo administration

    Drug

    Administer placebo intranasally, 6 individual 0.1 ml puffs, three puffs per nostril one every 30 seconds. The participants will be informed that they are receiving oxytocin, described as a potent agent for pain relief.

Treatment groups

120 Participants
are divided into 3 treatment groups
Group A: Intranasal OxytocinActive comparator 1 intervention
Group B: Intranasal placeboActive comparator 1 intervention
Group C: Intranasal nothing (control)No intervention 0 interventions

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

1

Analgesia-weighted empathic pain ratings (R')

Subjective pain ratings for each stimulus adjusted for treatment-specific baseline and analgesia-dependent gain to capture individual sensitivity to expectation-driven analgesia.

Time frame
During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), for each video stimulus presentation
2

Whole-brain multivariate predictive patterns

Partial least squares regression (PLSR) will be applied to voxel-wise fMRI contrast maps to identify latent components that predict analgesia-weighted pain scores under different interventions.

Time frame
During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), analyzed post-session
3

Directed functional connectivity and network hierarchy

Lagged partial-correlation directionality analysis (LPC-DA) among key regions identified by PLSR will quantify top-down and bottom-up information flow in empathic pain circuits.

Time frame
During fMRI scanning (45 minutes follollowing treament adminstration), analyzed post-session

Secondary outcomes

Other outcomes

Sponsors and contacts

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

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Lead sponsor

Source ClinicalTrials.gov
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