NCT04651192

Neurological and Psychological Effects of Combat-Related Stress

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 100 (actual)
• Sponsor: Tel Aviv University · Academic / Other
• Sex: Male
• Age: 18 Years – 23 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to determine what is the neurological and cognitive impact of combat exposure and prolonged stress, in the form of service in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Detailed description

Attention biases in threat processing have been assigned a prominent role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. This study aimed to characterize the mental resilience of combat soldiers, and explore the neuro-cognitive impact of prolonged stress, using eye-tracking, MRI and fMRI measurements. Participants will be assessed using questionnaires, cognitive tasks and magnetic imaging at 5 timepoints over the span of 4 years. Outcome measures will be depression, anxiety and post-traumatic scores, as well as dwell time on threat in eye-tracking paradigms tested in previous studies, and blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements.

Conditions

• Stress Disorder, Posttraumatic
• Stress, Psychological

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Combat Exposure	Soldiers will be exposed to combat as part of their routine military service. The ROTC students will not be exposed to combat.

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-03-01
• Primary completion: 2025-03-01
• Completion: 2025-05-01
• First posted: 2020-12-03
• Last updated: 2025-05-28

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Israel