Clinical trial NCT02572830: Reconsolidation and EMDR
Official title: Blocking Memory Reconsolidation by Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: PTSD
Keywords: Reconsolidation
EMDR
PTSD
Lead sponsor: University of Zurich
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Massachusetts General Hospital
name: Harvard Medical School (HMS and HSDM)
First posted: 2015-10-09
Enrollment: 160
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 60
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: Blocking of reconsolidation by pharmacological or behavioral means offers the therapeutic possibility of weakening traumatic memories in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Two reconsolidation-based interventions, propranolol and extinction learning, have been shown to weaken fear memories in human healthy subjects. However, the success of these interventions seems to be limited to weak conditioned fear memories. This calls for new, potentially more efficacious, interventions to be tested. Bilateral eye movements seem to be a promising candidate intervention for blocking reconsolidation due to the compelling evidence of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing as effective treatment in PTSD. The investigators' aim is to test bilateral eye movements as an active reconsolidation-blocking intervention in an optimized differential fear conditioning procedure that the investigators have recently developed. This novel experimental assay creates stronger fear memories in healthy individuals.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Male or female between 18 years and 60 years of age
* Presence of a manageable, nonphobic fear of spiders as determined by scores above the mean (male: 8.06; female: 10.46) on the German adapted Spider Phobia Questionnaire (SPQ; 38) and phobia criteria extracted from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Axis I Disorders (SCID-I; 39)
* Signed Informed Consent after being informed

Exclusion Criteria:

* Current or past neurological or other medical condition affecting the brain
* Current use of any medication (except contraceptives, herbal medicine)
* Known or suspected non-compliance, drug or alcohol misuse
* Presence of any current psychiatric disorders determined by the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI; 40)
* Inability to follow the procedures of the study, e.g. due to language problems
* No SC response to physical (Valsalva maneuver), psychological (mental arithmetic) and/or auditive (handclapping) stressor

Primary outcomes:
measure: Skin conductance (SC) response
timeFrame: Change from Day 1 (acquisition) fear conditioned SC response at day 3 (testing of renewal, reinstatement) and day 30 follow-up (testing of spontaneous recovery/renewal, savings)
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response
timeFrame: Change from Day 1 (acquisition) fear conditioned BOLD response at day 3 (testing of renewal, reinstatement) and day 30 follow-up (testing of spontaneous recovery/renewal, savings)
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Zurich
country: Switzerland
facility: University Hospital Zurich, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
state: ZH
Study officials:
affiliation: University Hospital of Zurich, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
name: Christoph Mueller-Pfeiffer, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: