Noradrenergic Activity and Attention

Completed

• Conditions: Aging

• Registration Number: NCT05120713
• Lead Sponsor: University of Southern California

Brief Summary

Older adults demonstrate increased distractibility by task-irrelevant information which contributes to general cognitive impairment. However, it is yet unclear how changes in noradrenergic activity during aging influences attentional control. In the current study, tonic noradrenergic activity will be increased or decreased to investigate its behavioral and neural effects on attentional control.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2021-10-13
• Study Start: 2021-11-01
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-11-03
• Study First Posted: 2021-11-15
• Status Verified: 2023-11
• Primary Completion: 2023-11-20
• Study Completion: 2023-11-20
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-11-21
• Last Update Posted: 2023-11-24

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 164

Inclusion Criteria

• Fluent in English
• Aged between 18-35 or 50-80
• Have normal or corrected-to-normal vision and hearing, and normal color vision
• Have a mobile phone and email address

Exclusion Criteria

• Non-English speakers
• Currently practicing any relaxation, meditation, or breathing technique for more than an hour per week
• Have participated in studies measuring attentional capture in the past year
• Experiencing symptoms of dementia

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Initial Eye-movements Toward Target and Distractor Shapes Measured by an Eye-tracker	Calculated once at the end of the 1 day experiment	The oculomotor suppression effect is a lower likelihood that salient display items will be the target of the initial eye movement in a visual search task compared to nonsalient display items. This effect is calculated from the percentage of first saccades toward a non-target stimuli subtracted by the percentage of first saccades toward the distractor stimuli. Greater % of first saccades toward the target would demonstrate better goal-directed attentional control and greater % of first saccades toward the distractor would demonstrate increased distractibility. Thus, a greater oculomotor suppression effect would demonstrate an increased ability to inhibit salient information that is irrelevant to the task.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology; 🇺🇸 Los Angeles, California, United States