NCT05768659

Fear Conditioning Paradigm in Obesity

Implicit Reactions to Threats in Individuals With Obesity: Primary Evidence From Fear Conditioning Paradigm

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 48 (actual)
• Sponsor: Istituto Auxologico Italiano · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 20 Years – 50 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Fear processing in obesity and specifically the ability to i) learn and remember threatening stimuli, and ii) implicitly (i.e., unconsciously) and explicitly (consciously) discriminate them from neutral ones, will be investigated in affected individuals through the fear-conditioning paradigm.

Conditions

• Obesity

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Fear Conditioning	It is a 2-day paradigm. Participants will undergo an auditory fear conditioning task in 3 phases: (1) pre-conditioning habituation, (2) unconditioned stimulus (US) calibration, where USs will be delivered to set the individual stimulation intensity threshold, and (3) fear conditioning, in which participants will be exposed to the conditioned stimulus (CS) associated with the US with an 80% pairing rate. 24 hours later, the (1) implicit recognition of the CS and novel stimuli (NSs), and the (2) explicit recognition, through an alternative forced-choice task will be assessed. Also, (3) the perceptual discrimination (among the CS and NSs) will be tested. Event-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) will be collected as an implicit index of defensive fear responses, while the accuracy in detecting and discriminating the CS from NSs as the explicit index. Psychological questionnaires about anxiety symptoms will be also administered.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-06-07
• Primary completion: 2024-01-10
• Completion: 2024-01-10
• First posted: 2023-03-14
• Last updated: 2025-08-27

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy