An interventional study of Anticipatory psychological stress in Aging, Anxiety and Memory Impairment, sponsored by Georgia Institute of Technology. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 65 Years to 80 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-09-23.
Sponsored by Georgia Institute of Technology · Not applicable, Interventional, and Basic science
Two hallmarks of both healthy aging and age-related disease are 1) memory and navigational deficits, particularly in orienting towards goal locations and planning how to navigate to them, and 2) increased susceptibility to stress and altered regulation of the stress response. However, there are marked individual differences in these age-related changes. The investigators' proposal will help characterize factors that contribute to this variability.
Participants will be pseudorandomly assigned to stress-manipulated or control groups. The investigators will give both groups a novel immersive navigation task, validated by the PI in healthy young adults. This paradigm gives participants the opportunity to either (a) flexibly draw on spatial memory in order to plan efficient routes to goal locations, or (b) fall back on inefficient, but cognitively less-demanding, stimulus-response associations (i.e., habits). Using neuroimaging and behavioral measures, the investigators' protocol will test whether experimentally-induced stress leads individuals to bring fewer details about future locations to mind when route planning, and whether such restricted prospective thought ultimately biases participants towards relatively inflexible, habitual actions.
Two hallmarks of both healthy aging and age-related disease are 1) memory and navigational deficits, particularly in orienting towards goal locations and planning how to navigate to them, and 2) increased susceptibility to stress and altered regulation of the stress response. However, there are marked individual differences in these age-related changes. The investigators' proposal will help characterize factors that contribute to this variability.
The investigators propose a study that utilizes cutting-edge imaging and virtual reality techniques to characterize the neural mechanisms of prospective (future goal-directed) navigational planning in aging. The investigators will use multi-voxel pattern analyses (MVPA) to obtain neural indices of memory-guided navigational planning. The investigators will then examine the mechanisms through which stress limits the ability of individuals to flexibly navigate to future goals. A critical aim will be to evaluate the neural bases for individual differences in navigational planning and the stress response, providing novel insight into convergent neurocognitive traits that underlie different degrees of age-related cognitive decline. The investigators predict that impaired prospective planning is associated with individual differences in (a) susceptibility to exogenous, experimentally-induced stress, and (b) stress-disrupted functioning of memory and attention and cognitive control networks necessary for mental simulation.
The investigators' proposal combines a novel immersive navigation paradigm, validated by the PI in healthy young adults, and an established between-subjects exogenous manipulation of psychological stress (see Research Strategy). This paradigm gives participants the opportunity to either (a) flexibly draw on spatial memory in order to plan efficient routes to goal locations, or (b) fall back on inefficient, but cognitively less-demanding, stimulus-response associations (i.e., habits). Participants will be pseudorandomly assigned to stress-manipulated or control groups, with an initial prospective random assignment of subject IDs being adjusted as recruitment progresses in order to enforce approximately equivalent age distributions in the two groups (and thus limit confounds in subsequent group comparisons). Salivary cortisol (stress hormone) assays (de-identified) will help validate the stress difference between groups. Leveraging MVPA, and trait questionnaires, the investigators' study will test whether experimentally-induced stress leads individuals to bring fewer details about future locations to mind when route planning, and whether such restricted prospective thought ultimately biases participants towards relatively inflexible, habitual actions.
Aging is associated with differences in the degree to which people rely on "map-like" spatial memory vs. procedural motor responses to traverse environments. Thus the investigators' investigation of the effects of stress on habitual vs. prospective spatial memory-guided navigation is embedded within the context of age-related differences in spatial memory processing in the investigators' target population. The investigators will further employ an endogenous navigational strategy identification task, enabling us to 1) establish a link between endogenous navigation strategy preferences and performance on the investigators' prospective navigation task, and 2) study how endogenous navigational strategy preferences interact with induced stress to affect the investigators' neural and behavioral outcome measures indexing efficient, prospective spatial cognition.
7,201 studies on the registry are indexed under Anxiety Disorders; 1,682 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 85 is close to the median of 80 across 6,057 interventional studies indexed under Anxiety Disorders.
Browse Anxiety Disorders studies →Georgia Institute of Technology is the lead sponsor of 24 studies on the registry; 5 are open to participants now.
Of its 9 completed or terminated interventional studies of FDA-regulated products, 7 (78%) have results posted.
Compared within Anxiety Disorders, the registry's first condition term, which may not be this study's main condition. Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily. How we classify →
Go through the criteria one by one — yes, no or not sure — and take the list to your doctor or the study team. Kept in this browser only.
Exclusion Criteria:
The purpose of this study is to investigate mechanisms of normally functioning memory, and memory-related changes in healthy aging. Thus, any confounding factors that may influence cognition, other than age, will be exclusionary. Potential participants that endorse any of the following conditions will be excluded from the study:
Underlined terms in the criteria open these too. Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
A reason a treatment, test or procedure should not be given to a particular person, such as an allergy, another illness or a medicine they take.
Contraindication
A reason a treatment, test or procedure should not be given to a particular person, such as an allergy, another illness or a medicine they take.
Explained by clinicaltrials.gg, not part of the registry record. The study team decides who can take part.
Participants in this group will perform the psychology tasks (virtual navigation) without any manipulation of psychological stress
Participants in this group will perform the psychology tasks (virtual navigation) under manipulated psychological stress (anticipatory threat of shock)
Behavioral: Anticipatory psychological stress
Unpredictable delivery of low-level electrical stimulation to left ankle periodically throughout psychology tasks (virtual navigation). Established procedure for inducing anticipatory stress.
Behavioral probability of taking a shortcut between control and treatment groups
Probability of taking a virtual navigation shortcut on an fMRI task trial, compared between stress and control groups. Measurement tool: objective categorical measure (no scale) reflecting proportion of trials in which participants traverse the shortcut road or, alternatively, the familiar (longer) road in a virtual environment.
Time frame: Approximately 1.5 years
fMRI activation level between control and treatment groups
Network activation levels (across frontoparietal, hippocampal, and striatal memory network) during fMRI task trials, compared between stress and control groups. Measurement tool: fMRI activity level. Scale: continuous activity level estimates from fMRI.
Time frame: Approximately 1.5 years
Neural memory representation reactivation between control and treatment groups
Memory reactivation levels in neural activity patterns during fMRI task, compared between stress and control groups. Measurement tool: Machine learning algorithm trained to decode fMRI patterns across voxels. Scale: algorithm success at classifying fMRI patterns according to the correct location memory for a given fMRI task trial
Time frame: Approximately 1.5 years
Relationship between fMRI activity level and behavioral probability of taking a shortcut.
A linear regression will relate continuous network activity levels (Outcome measure 2) across participants with proportion of virtual navigation shortcuts (shortcut vs familiar route; Outcome measure 1). Measurement tool: fMRI and objective categorical measure of route choice behavior during fMRI task.
Time frame: Approximately 1.5 years
2. Salivary cortisol (stress hormone) response difference between stress and control participant groups.
A two-sample t-test will compare stress hormone levels (cortisol from saliva sample) between the stress and control groups. Measurement tool: cotton swab (salivette) assay of de-identified hormone levels in saliva during fMRI task.
Time frame: Approximately 1.5 years
Plan to share: No
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Started Sep 2019 (actual). Primary completion is estimated for Dec 2026, 87 months after the start.
Of 3,836 non-industry interventional studies with no phase under Anxiety Disorders, half reached primary completion within 12 months of starting (the median), counting those still running; a quarter within 5 and three quarters within 28. This study's planned 87 months is above that.
Counting every sponsor, half of 3,938 studies reached it within 12 months; a quarter within 5 and three quarters within 28.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
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Georgia Institute of Technology