Medial-prefrontal Enhancement During Schizophrenia Systems Imaging

Recruiting now · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Schizophrenia

In brief

This randomized controlled trial in healthy controls (HC) and patients with schizophrenia (SZ) aims to examine 1) the underlying cognitive and neural cause of self-agency deficits in SZ; 2) the responsiveness to a novel navigated repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (nrTMS) target in the medial/superior prefrontal cortex (mPFC); and 3) how modulation of mPFC activity impacts the larger self-agency network to mediate changes in self-agency judgments. Our overall hypothesis is that increased mPFC excitability by active high-frequency nrTMS in HC and SZ will induce behavioral improvements in self-agency and neural changes in the larger self-agency network that will generalize to improvements in overall cognition, symptoms and daily functioning, and will likely lead to the development of new effective neuromodulation therapies in patients with schizophrenia.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT04807530

Run by

University of California, San Francisco

People needed

160

Starts

2020-11-12

Expected to finish

2026-12-30

Last updated by the study team

2025-08-29

Who can join

Age: 18 and older, up to 64. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• All Subjects:
• Good general physical health
• English is first language
• No neurological disorder
• Meets MRI criteria
• No current alcohol or substance use disorder
• Schizophrenia participants:
• Schizophrenia diagnosis of any illness duration,
• Clinical stability, defined as 12 weeks outpatient status and 4 weeks low to moderate dose of antipsychotic medication (<1000 mg. chlorpromazine equivalents), plus stable doses of all other psychotropic medications

You may not qualify if…

• All Subjects:
• Implanted metallic parts of implanted electronic devices
• Pregnant or trying to become pregnant
• Any condition that would prevent the subject from giving voluntary informed consent
• Scalp wounds or infections
• Claustrophobia precluding MRI
• Ongoing seizures
• Neurological disorder

Where it is running

• UCSF — San Francisco, California, United States (enrolling)

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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