Clinical trials

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and trauma-related symptoms are often characterized by recurrent intrusive memories that cause distress and interfere with daily functioning. Although trauma-focused interventions such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) may be effective, they often involve engagement with trauma-related memories, which can be distressing for some individuals and may affect treatment acceptability. This randomized controlled trial will evaluate a standardized eye-movement-based procedure for trauma-exposed individuals experiencing recurrent intrusive memories. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of several memory-related task conditions involving eye movements. The study will assess the frequency and distress of trauma-related intrusive memories at prespecified assessment points, as well as PTSD symptoms, intervention-related distress, acceptability, and safety. Findings from this trial may help inform the development of tolerable approaches for targeting trauma-related intrusive memories.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is characterized by recurrent, intrusive memories of traumatic events that cause significant distress and functional impairment. Although trauma-focused treatments are effective, they typically require deliberate recollection of traumatic experiences, which can be distressing and may contribute to treatment avoidance or dropout. In previous experimental studies conducted with healthy participants, we demonstrated that unconscious reactivation of trauma-related cues, followed-after a brief delay corresponding to the memory reconsolidation window-by a visuospatial interference task (Tetris gameplay), reduced the frequency and emotional intensity of intrusive memories. These findings suggest that memory representations may be modifiable during reconsolidation without requiring conscious recall. Building on this work, the present randomized controlled trial (RCT) aims to evaluate the clinical efficacy and tolerability of this reconsolidation-based intervention in trauma-exposed individuals experiencing five or more intrusive memories per week.