Fear Conditioning Paradigm in Obesity

Implicit Reactions to Threats in Individuals With Obesity: Primary Evidence From Fear Conditioning Paradigm

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT05768659

Acronym

GenAllertOB

Enrollment

Registered

2023-03-14

Start date

2022-06-07

Completion date

2024-01-10

Last updated

2025-08-27

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Obesity

Keywords

fear conditioning, fear processing, anxiety

Brief summary

Fear processing in obesity and specifically the ability to i) learn and remember threatening stimuli, and ii) implicitly (i.e., unconsciously) and explicitly (consciously) discriminate them from neutral ones, will be investigated in affected individuals through the fear-conditioning paradigm.

Interventions

BEHAVIORALFear Conditioning

It is a 2-day paradigm. Participants will undergo an auditory fear conditioning task in 3 phases: (1) pre-conditioning habituation, (2) unconditioned stimulus (US) calibration, where USs will be delivered to set the individual stimulation intensity threshold, and (3) fear conditioning, in which participants will be exposed to the conditioned stimulus (CS) associated with the US with an 80% pairing rate. 24 hours later, the (1) implicit recognition of the CS and novel stimuli (NSs), and the (2) explicit recognition, through an alternative forced-choice task will be assessed. Also, (3) the perceptual discrimination (among the CS and NSs) will be tested. Event-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) will be collected as an implicit index of defensive fear responses, while the accuracy in detecting and discriminating the CS from NSs as the explicit index. Psychological questionnaires about anxiety symptoms will be also administered.

Study design

Observational model

CASE_CONTROL

Time perspective

CROSS_SECTIONAL

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

20 Years to 50 Years

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

* Right-handed * diagnosis of obesity (the level of body mass index - BMI - higher or equal to 30).

Exclusion criteria

• concurrent neurological, neurodevelopmental (e.g., autism), motor, somatosensory and/or psychiatric disorders.

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
SCRs)	Baseline	The event-related skin conductance responses (SCRs) in the case of the CS will be measured. This will represent the implicit index.

Secondary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Recognition %	baseline	Level of accuracy (in %) in recognizing and discriminating the CS from NS will be computed. This will represent the explicit index.

Countries

Italy

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026