Biobehavioral Correlates of Acute Phobic Fear

University of Colorado Boulder (CU)

Status

Unknown

Conditions

Phobia

Treatments

Behavioral: Fear tasks

Study type

Observational

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT03813823

18-0284

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study seeks to measure the time course of circulating proinflammatory markers (interleukin-1 beta [IL-1β], interleukin-6 [IL-6], tumor necrosis factor alpha [TNF-α], and C-reactive protein [CRP]) and salivary alpha amylase (sAA) following laboratory fear arousal. Further, this study seeks to implement neurocognitive, physiological, and self-report measures to explore the role of threat sensitivity as a predictor of this response. The broad research question seeks to better understand the relationship between neurocognitive fear and subsequent stress responding elicited by both the immune system (i.e., proinflammatory markers) and autonomic nervous system (i.e., sAA). In light of these aims, the primary outcomes of the current study are the proinflammatory markers (IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, CRP), while secondary outcomes consist of sAA, neurocognitive measures (i.e., dot-probe task), physiological correlates (i.e., heart rate, galvanic skin response), and self-report measures.

Enrollment

30 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 40 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

18 - 40 years old
Phobic or nonphobic fear of spiders.
Willing to proceed through 5-stimulus fear hierarchy or maintain 7 or higher subjective units of distress through fear task (see Procedures section).

Exclusion criteria

Lifetime history of serious mental illness
Lifetime history of intellectual or developmental delays
Lifetime history of chronic physical or medical illness including blood clotting disorders
Lifetime history of allergies to latex
Lifetime history of hormonal replacement therapy
Lifetime history of blindness
Lifetime history of blood/injection phobia or aversion to needles/injection (based on IPS-Anx and MQ)
Substance abuse in the past 2 years
Cigarette/tobacco use in the past 2 years
Major depression within the past 12 months
Traumatic stress within the past 12 months
Pregnancy within the past 12 months
Anesthesia within the past 3 months
Night shift work within the past month
Use of medication within the past month (except for oral contraception)
Acute illness or infection within the past month
Average sleep outside of 6 - 10 hours per night within the past month
Average intake of 4 or more alcoholic beverages per week
Average intake of 6 or more cups caffeine per day
Use of marijuana within the week before the laboratory session
Use of alcohol within the week before the laboratory session
Body mass index outside of 18.5 - 24.9 range