Nonsuicidal Self Injury, Pain Empathy
Conditions
Brief summary
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.
Interventions
None listed
Sponsors
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Study design
Observational model
CASE_CONTROL
Time perspective
CROSS_SECTIONAL
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
15 Years to 18 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* 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)
Exclusion criteria
* 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)
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Neural activity as indexed by BOLD fMRI | About 8 minutes | Brain activity will be monitored by task-based fMRI. The paradigm will present affective and physical pain empathy pictures and matched control stimuli. Alterations in the patients will be determined by comparing neural activity to the experimental conditions between the experimental groups (NSSI vs. HC) using ANOVA models. |
Countries
China
Contacts
Primary ContactBenjamin Becker
Outcome results
None listed