Human Neural Correlates of Multi-Timescale Inference

Neuronal Mechanisms of Human Cognition

Adult epilepsy patients who are undergoing intracranial monitoring will participate in a simple behavioral task during the clinical recording period.

Study Overview

• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Conditions: Cognition; Brain Activity
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Decision-making task; Behavioral: eye tracking

Detailed Description

The investigators will analyze recorded neural activity, eye movements, and behavioral responses from epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring with clinically-relevant microelectrodes in hippocampus that perform a decision-making task. The participants will perform 1 session of the task during their monitoring period. Behavioral responses will be fit to inference models to identify strategies subjects use, and neural recordings (neuronal firing and low frequency activity) will be correlated with task features by comparing results to those produced by randomized (bootstrapped) data. Neural activity and corresponding behavioral strategies for each participant will be used to refine theoretical recurrent neural network models of hippocampal engagement in multi-timescale inference.

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Estimated): 30

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Tahra Eissa; Phone Number: (303) 492-6974; Email: tahra.eissa@cuanschutz.edu

Study Locations

• United States
  • Colorado
    • Aurora, Colorado, United States, 80045
      • University of Colorado Anschutz

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Epilepsy patients with intractable seizures who are undergoing clinical continuous intracranial recordings of the brain's electrical activity to assess the seizure focus location.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial electrode monitoring for uncontrolled seizures.
• no lesions identified in the participants' brains
• capable of giving consent

Exclusion Criteria:

• seizure activity during task recording
• electrodes in regions of interest are identified to be the seizure focus
• task performance outside of the normal range as determined from online studies with healthy participants

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Number of groups / cohorts

1

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort	Intervention / Treatment
Flexible Decision Making Task	Behavioral: Decision-making task; Patients will be asked to play a decision-making game in which they hear a tone and must identify its source.; Behavioral: eye tracking; Patients will have simultaneous eye-tracking performed while playing the decision-making game

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Pupil size changes with respect to task features	pupil size will be measured with a portable eye-tracking device and correlated with task features	continuous recording during task, up to 30 minutes
Behavioral Responses	Patient selects one of two choices on each trial using the computer keyboard	Approximately 10 seconds per trial, up to 30 minutes total
Intracranial electrode recordings to measure changes in brain activity during decision making	Intracranial neural recordings from patients who are implanted with electrodes for clinical purposes tha take place during the decision-making task	duration of the task, approximately 30 minutes

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Colorado, Boulder

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Estimated): June 15, 2026
• Primary Completion (Estimated): August 1, 2027
• Study Completion (Estimated): June 30, 2028

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: May 11, 2026
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 18, 2026
• First Posted (Actual): May 26, 2026

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 26, 2026
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 18, 2026
• Last Verified: May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 25-1284; R00NS127855 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO
• IPD Plan Description: Given that these are patients, the investigators cannot directly share their identifiable information without conflicting with HIPAA compliance

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No