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NCT Number: NCT07623746

Neural Mechanisms of Emotion-behaviour Interactions

Deciding what to do when for how long - self-organizing one's behaviour - is an important feature of daily life. Emotions arise providing short-cuts for the computational complexities. Yet, one still knows relatively little about the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. EMOBB will establish the computational, cognitive and neural underpinnings of the rich interplay between emotions and self-organized behaviour in naturalistic environments. Previous work has almost exclusively relied on tasks structured into experimenter determined trials - thus how people self-organized behaviour could not be measured. To overcome this, EMOBB will combine novel naturalistic tasks in which people have freedom what to do when for how long with subjective and objective measurements of emotions. This will be made possible through a computational modelling approach that allows dissecting and quantifying even complex behaviour-emotion interactions.

Specifically, EMOBB will use three cognitive tasks of emotion-behaviour interplay that participants will do while undergoing functional magnetic resonance brain imaging and monitoring of their facial expressions with an MRI-compatible camera.

The primary hypothesis of EMOBB is that both unique and shared neural networks will underpin the interplay between emotions and behaviour across our cognitive tasks.

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Key information

Conditions

Healthy Volunteer

Age range

18 year–45 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

CERMEP (Centre d'Etude de Recherche Multimodal et pluridisciplinaire en imagerie du vivant)

Bron, 69500, France

Location contact

Jacqueline SCHOLL, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

4 81 10 65 00 ext. + 33

Jacqueline SCHOLL, PhD

PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • 18-45 years old,
  • fluent French speakers,
  • healthy,
  • without a beard at the time of testing,
  • right-handed,
  • being able to use both hands
  • BMI between 18.5 and 30
  • give written informed consen
  • for women: contraception;

Exclusion criteria

  • neurological, psychiatric disorders, or severe chronic disorders (diabetes, cardiac, kidney, lung, liver disorders, inflammatory disorders)
  • pregnancy or breast-feeding
  • under guardianship, currently admitted to a psychiatric hospital other than for research purposes)
  • not wanting to be informed of abnormalities detected during MRI scan,
  • taking part in other studies with exclusion periods,
  • MRI exclusion criteria (cardiac pace maker etc, vascular or intracranial clamps or stents, neurological stimulator, any other metal in the body, past accidents with metal to the eyes, metallic prostheses, metal in the mouth (braces, retainers), medication pumps, any implants (e.g. hearing implants), piercings that cannot be removed, having worked with metal (other than radiography related to MRI) being claustrophobic, tatoos above the shoulders.

Treatment and study plan

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Other

Participants will perform a cognitive task (responses through button presses) while we measure brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and record their facial expressions.

Primary outcomes

  1. Brain activity in regions of interest

    Time frame: Day 0

    Brain activity is captured as percentage change in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal with FMRI compared to baseline across tasks across brain regions (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC; dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC).

Secondary outcomes

  1. Brain activity during task 1 (Self-organization under threat)

    Time frame: Day 0

    Brain activity is captured as percentage change in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal with FMRI compared to rest in task 1 across brain regions (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC; dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC).

  2. Brain activity during task 2 (Self-organization and learning)

    Time frame: Day 0

    Brain activity is captured as percentage change in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) compared to rest in task 2 across brain regions (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC; dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC).

  3. Brain activity during task 3 (Self-organization and social context)

    Time frame: Day 0

    Brain activity is captured as percentage change in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal with FMRI compared to rest in task 3 across brain regions (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC; dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC).

Study contacts

Contact information is provided by the study sponsor or research team.

Jacqueline SCHOLL, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

+ 33 ext. 4 81 10 65 00

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Hospices Civils de Lyon

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Neural and Cognitive Mechanism of Adaptive and Maladaptive Interplay Between Emotions in Behaviour in Naturalistic Tasks

Acronym: EMOBB

Important dates

Study start
2026
Primary completion
2030
Study completion
2030
First posted
Jun 3, 2026
Registry last updated
Jun 3, 2026

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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