Investigating Near-Threshold Perception During Anesthetic Sedation

University of Michigan

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: fMRI; Propofol; Anesthesia

Treatments: Combination Product: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) with propofol

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT06403852

HUM00251768

R01GM103894 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The researchers expect to gain a deeper understanding of mental function during different levels of anesthesia, and to evaluate if the use of ultrasonic brain stimulation accelerates return to consciousness.

Propofol is FDA approved for use in patients undergoing an anesthetic for medical treatment but is not approved for use in healthy volunteers.

Full description

The stimulus set will include real and scrambled images, where the scrambled images will be created by phase-shuffling a randomly chosen real image from each category to preserve category specific low-level image features. Because scrambled images do not include an object stimulus, the images are used as "catch trials" to determine the subjects' baseline tendency to give positive responses to a question about the subjects' recognition experience. Each object category will include four unique real images and one scrambled image. Each image will be repeated 10 times (i.e., trials) for each 16-min session. The pre-stimulus interval will vary randomly from trial to trial between 4 and 8 seconds to prevent stimulus timing predictability. The stimuli will be presented in a randomized order to prevent category predictability.

Enrollment: 36 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 40 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Healthy study subjects with American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA)-1 status.
• Right-handed
• Body mass index (BMI) less than 30.
• All subjects will be English speakers.

Exclusion criteria

• Medical contraindication to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning; are unable to undergo MRI scanning because of possible pregnancy or currently breastfeeding, BMI>30, metallic substances in the body, claustrophobia, anxiety, or cardiopulmonary disease; or have an intracranial structural abnormality on T1-weighted MRI scans.
• History of allergy to propofol, eggs or egg products, soybean or soybean products, neurological, cardiovascular, or pulmonary illness; significant head injury with loss of consciousness; learning disability or other developmental disorder; sleep apnea or any severe snoring history; gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or heartburn; pancreatitis or a history of pancreatitis, or sensory/motor loss sufficient to interfere with performance of the study.
• Tattoos in the head or neck region will be excluded from study; other tattoos are subject to determination by investigators based on their assessment regarding participant safety. To eliminate aspiration risk subjects will also be excluded if they have had recent food or liquid intake (within 8 hours).
• History of drug use, have a positive drug screen, are unwilling to abstain from alcohol for 24 hours prior to dosing, or have a current history of nicotine use.
• Pregnancy

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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36 participants in 1 patient group

Image recognition task

Experimental group

Description:

The stimulus set will include real and scrambled images, where the scrambled images will be created by phase-shuffling a randomly chosen real image from each category to preserve category specific low-level image features. Each object category will include four unique real images and one scrambled image. Each image will be repeated 10 times (i.e., trials) for each 16-min session. The pre-stimulus interval will vary randomly from trial to trial between 4 and 8 seconds to prevent stimulus timing predictability. The stimuli will be presented in a randomized order to prevent category predictability.

Treatment:

Combination Product: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) with propofol