Manipulating Social Percepts During fMRI

April 9, 2026 updated by: Emily S. Finn, Trustees of Dartmouth College

Manipulating Social Percepts With Real-Time fMRI

This study will investigate the use of real-time fMRI to change how participants perceive social information.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The investigators have previously established stable individual differences in how people accumulate evidence for the presence and nature of a social interaction in visual displays, termed "social tuning curves". Taking individuals with deeply characterized neural and behavioral social tuning curves, this protocol will covertly manipulate percepts in two ways using real-time fMRI: 1) brain-state-triggered trials to bias participants toward a given percept based on their pre-stimulus brain state, and 2) implicit neurofeedback prior to and during stimulus exposure to teach participants to control their brain activity in social-perceptual circuits. These experiments will directly test causal relationships between activity at different levels of the cortical hierarchy and an individual's ultimate percept of a given social stimulus.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Estimated)

10

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Healthy individuals between 18 and 35 years of age

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • willingness and availability to come for a total of 6 MRI scan sessions
  • good fMRI data quality in previous, non-clinical trial study, including low head motion, high vigilance during the task as measured via simultaneous eye tracking, consistent behavioral responses

Exclusion Criteria:

  • metallic objects in body contraindicated for the MRI scanner
  • history of severe psychiatric or neurological disease
  • currently on medication for a psychiatric condition
  • illicit drug use
  • claustrophobia
  • heavy nicotine or alcohol use
  • prior head injury
  • pregnancy

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Likelihood of certain social percepts (behavioral)
Time Frame: during fMRI session
Likelihood of participants to report perceiving certain types of interactions in social animations. Percepts are characterized according to if a social interaction was perceived, and if so, how it was perceived (on a valence axis from positive to neutral to negative).
during fMRI session

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Control over brain activity (fMRI-based)
Time Frame: during fMRI session
In Expt 3B (implicit neurofeedback), the degree of control obtained over the target brain region in each block will serve as a secondary outcome measure. Dynamics of brain activity in the region will be assessed over the course of the block and compared to a control block where participants were attempting to control a different region, and/or the same region in the opposite direction. The specific outcome measure will be the extent to which activity increases or decreases (i.e., slope over time) according to the instructions in that block, measured relative to the change in activity (slope) in a control block.
during fMRI session

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Trustees of Dartmouth College

Collaborators

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

September 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

May 1, 2027

Study Completion (Estimated)

May 1, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 2, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 9, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

April 14, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

April 14, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 9, 2026

Last Verified

April 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Other Study ID Numbers

  • STUDY00032009
  • R01MH129648 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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