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NCT Number: NCT05574634

The Role of the Locus Coeruleus in Age-related Distractibility

A growing body of research has highlighted the importance of frontal regions, at both the functional and structural levels, in age-related declines in attentional and cognitive processing. However, the underlying neurobiological pathophysiological changes in the brain that contribute to these declines are still largely unclear. The objective of this proposal is to investigate neural mechanisms of age-related attentional distractibility, focusing on the neural circuit initiated from the locus coeruleus (LC). In the current proposal, the investigators will test the hypothesis that the neural disconnectivity of LC with the salience network (SN) drives failures of ignoring distractors in older adults. The investigators will examine how LC-SN connectivity is associated with selective attention performance, and how improved LC-SN connectivity through a cognitive training program may lead to improved attentional performance.

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Key information

Conditions

Aging Alzheimer Disease Brain Diseases Central Nervous System Diseases Dementia Mental Disorders Nervous System Diseases Neurocognitive Disorders Neurodegenerative Diseases Tauopathies

Age range

18 year–75 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

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

Inclusion:

  • Healthy adult participants
  • No younger than 18 and no older than 75 yrs of age
  • Ability to provide written informed consent

Exclusion:

  • History of surgery involving metal implants
  • Possible metal fragments in the eyes
  • Pacemaker
  • A history of claustrophobia
  • Braces
  • Weighing over 250 pounds
  • Pregnant or possibility of being pregnant.
  • Severe medical or psychiatric conditions (e.g., blind or deaf, head trauma)
  • Learning disabilities or developmental disabilities

Treatment and study plan

Tablet based adaptive multimodal attention practice program

Behavioral

An adaptive at-home tablet-based program that includes variants of the Flanker Task, the Stroop Task, and a Visual Tracking Task. Each session of practice will include up to ten minutes with each of these task types, and the tasks will increase in difficulty in a way that further taxes attention (such as through more distractors or more incongruent trials) as participant performance improves.

Tablet based adaptive criterion task practice program

Behavioral

An adaptive, at-home tablet-based variant of the criterion task, that is, the selective attention/distraction task used during the scanning portion of the human participant portions of the study, that takes up to 25 minutes to complete each session.

Primary outcomes

  1. Change in accuracy on the place-face selective attention task after two weeks

    Time frame: Scan before and after attentional practice (2 weeks between scans)

    During this task, participants will be presented to with target place stimuli overlaid on nonexpressive faces) and be asked to identify categories of place images ('building' to 'house') selectively as soon as possible while ignoring overlapped faces. The investigators will also include place only images to measure participants' baseline neural activation when there is no distractor. Each image condition will be presented in a mixed event related design that includes 15 blocks for each condition as a function of image type (overlaid vs. place-only). The block order will be counterbalanced and each block will be separated by a 10-s blank screen.

  2. Change in fMRI LC-SN connectivity after two weeks

    Time frame: Scan before and after attentional practice (2 weeks between scans)

    An fMRI measure of LC-SN connectivity

Study contacts

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

Benjamin Katz, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

540-231-9816

Tae-Ho Lee, PhD

CONTACT

[email protected]

540-231-6174

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Losing Specificity: the Role of the Locus Coeruleus in Age-related Distractibility

Important dates

Study start
2023
Primary completion
2027
Study completion
2027
First posted
Oct 10, 2022
Registry last updated
Aug 19, 2025

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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