Virtual rooms testing how control and environment change pain, anxiety, and memory.

Controllability of Virtual Contexts for the Modulation of the Affective Experience

This study tries to see if having control over pain in different virtual rooms changes how much pain and anxiety people feel and how well they do on memory and navigation tasks in healthy adults without major psychiatric or chronic pain conditions.

Quick facts

• Phase: NA
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 20 (estimated)
• Ages: 18 Years to 55 Years
• Sex: All
• Sponsor: Trustees of Dartmouth College (other)
• Locations: 1 site (Hanover, New Hampshire)
• Trial ID: NCT06986122 on ClinicalTrials.gov

What this trial studies

Participants navigate three distinct virtual rooms that are learned to be safe, controllable (a button can temporarily suppress thermal pain), or uncontrollable (pain cannot be avoided). Repeated exposures let participants learn context–pain contingencies while they perform a distracting maze-navigation task and receive calibrated thermal pain stimuli. Researchers record subjective pain and anxiety ratings alongside autonomic measures (skin conductance, heart and breathing rates) and brain activity to link perceived controllability and spatial context with physiological and neural responses. The protocol includes changing contingencies to examine how learned associations persist or adapt when environments are explicitly altered.

Who should consider this trial

Good fit: Healthy adults who have no current or past major psychiatric or neurological disorders, no chronic pain or frequent migraines, are not taking CNS-active medications, and are eligible for MRI are the intended participants.

Not a fit: People with current psychiatric diagnoses, recent seizures or major neurological or cardiovascular disease, chronic pain or frequent migraines, recent substance abuse, or any contraindication to MRI or to induced thermal pain are unlikely to qualify or receive benefit from participation.

Why it matters

Potential benefit: If successful, the findings could inform behavioral or contextual approaches that reduce pain and anxiety by increasing perceived control or using safe environmental cues.

How similar studies have performed: Prior behavioral and neuroimaging research has shown that perceived control and contextual cues can reduce pain and anxiety, so this protocol builds on a supportive but still-developing evidence base.

Eligibility criteria

* No self-reported current or history of depression, bipolar disorder, or other psychiatric diagnosis
* No self-reported current seizure disorder (i.e., seizure within past 10 years), or history of stroke or other major neurological diagnosis
* No self-reported current chronic pain, or acute pain within three months of the study period
* No current migraine disorder (i.e., 15 headache days or more in 1 month)
* No use of central nervous system-effective medication or other medication for neurological/psychiatric treatment
* No self-reported substance abuse within the last six months
* No contraindication to MRI (e.g., pregnancy, claustrophobia, pacemakers, ear/cochlear implants, shrapnel injuries, clips, or other ferromagnetic/electrical objects/devices, diagnosed brain abnormality such as tumor, or skin lesions on the scalp.)
* No contraindications for induced pain (e.g., no heart disease, high blood pressure, heart surgery, heart problems of any kind, severe asthma, respiratory problems of any kind, fibromyalgia, Raynaud's Syndrome or Disease, chronic pain, diabetes)
* Participants must be capable of performing experimental tasks (e.g., are able to read), are fluent or native speakers of English
* Participants must be able to tolerate the maximum level of thermal pain stimuli (for thermal stimuli)

Where this trial is running

Hanover, New Hampshire

• Dartmouth College — Hanover, New Hampshire, United States (RECRUITING)

Study contacts

• Study coordinator: Tor D Wager, PhD

Conditions: Pain Control, Anxiety, Memory, Place conditioning, controllability of pain