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Neurobiological Mechanisms of Aging and Stress on Prospective Navigation

Sponsor: Georgia Institute of Technology • ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT03896529

Registry updated: 2026-09-23

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Description

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.

Interventions

Anticipatory psychological stress (Behavioral)
Unpredictable delivery of low-level electrical stimulation to left ankle periodically throughout psychology tasks (virtual navigation). Established procedure for inducing anticipatory stress.

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion Criteria: * adults 65-80 * U.S. citizens or permanent residents * who speak fluent English * willing to come to Georgia Tech to participate in group testing sessions. Exclusion Criteria: * Individuals will be carefully screened using IRB-approved procedures for safety contraindications to MRI and electrical shock stimulation * (e.g., metal or electrical implants, heart arrhythmia, or medication affecting the cardiovascular system \[e.g. beta-blockers\]). 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: * Epilepsy * Dementia * Parkinson's disease * history of stroke or seizure * psychiatric disorders * untreated depression or emotional conditions * Attention Deficit Disorder * Multiple Sclerosis * uncontrolled hyper- or hypo-tension * untreated Diabetes * Sickle Cell Anemia * regularly use illegal or psychoactive drugs (e.g., cocaine, alcohol abuse, etc). * Additionally, individuals scoring \< 3 on WAIS-R forward span, \< 2 on WAIS-R backward span, and failing to name more than 2 vegetable names will be excluded from the study. These exclusions will insure that persons with mild cognitive impairment or typical indications of clinical dementia will be not participate in the research.

Conditions

Aging Anxiety Memory Impairment

Locations

Center for Advance Brain Imaging — Atlanta, Georgia, United States

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Official Source

Data sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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