Altered Neural Pain Empathic Reactivity in NSSI Adolescents

Recruiting now

Conditions studied: Nonsuicidal Self Injury, Pain Empathy

In brief

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is defined as direct, deliberate bodily harm without suicidal intention. In recent years, growing evidence suggests that NSSI has become a worldwide public health issue. People with NSSI behaviors, especially adolescents, commonly exhibit emotion-related and interpersonal problems. Pain empathy represents an essential basal domain of socio-emotional processing and refers to the ability to empathize, connect and share with others' pain. However, altered empathic processing has not been systematically examined in adolescents with NSSI. To this end, the current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study will recruit one group of NSSI adolescents (n=40) and one healthy control (HC) group (n=40), to compare their neural activity regarding pain empathy processing, which is measured by blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI. The investigators included conditions of physical pain empathy (stimuli depicting noxious stimulation to the limbs) and affective pain empathy (stimuli depicting faces expressing pain) as well as corresponding control stimuli. The investigators hypothesize that compared to HC, NSSI adolescents show increased empathic reactivity to physical pain stimuli in salience and arousal related brain regions but decreased empathic reactivity to affective pain empathic stimuli.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT05968313

Run by

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

People needed

80

Starts

2023-12-06

Expected to finish

2027-07-01

Last updated by the study team

2024-04-11

Who can join

Age: 15 and older, up to 18. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• 15-18 years
• right-handed
• normal or corrected normal visual acuity
• meet the proposed DSM-5 frequency criteria (e.g., ≥5 days of NSSI behaviors in the past year)

You may not qualify if…

• diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, other
• psychiatric disorders, etc.
• high suicidal risk
• recent use of medications that can affect neural activity
• have received or are receiving Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) other treatment for emotional problems within the past 6 months
• have a contraindication to MRI scanning (e.g., metal implants, claustrophobia or other conditions that make them inappropriate for MRI scanning)

Where it is running

• Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China — Chengdu, Sichuan, China (enrolling)

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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