Neuroimaging clinical trials at University of California Health

23 in progress, 16 open to eligible people

Showing trials for

  • Neuroimaging Study of Open-label Placebo in Depressed Adolescents

    open to eligible people ages 13-18

    Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the current leading cause of disability worldwide and adolescence is an especially vulnerable period for the onset of depression. Non-pharmacologic approaches are particularly attractive as treatment of adolescent depression due to the elevated risks of side effects related to the use of psychotropic drugs during development. A recent meta-analysis detected a positive and significant effect of non-deceptive placebos (open-label placebo, OLP) for a series of clinical conditions, including adult depression. To the investigators' knowledge, no studies of OLP have been conducted in depressed adolescents to date, although placebo response rates in adolescent depression are especially high, accounting for over 80% of the actual response to antidepressant treatment. The study's main objective is to estimate the effectiveness and understand the mechanism of OLP in depressed adolescents. The central hypothesis is that the mechanism by which OLP exerts its action in adolescent depression is by forming a positive expectation, which activates endogenous mu-opioid receptor (MOR)-mediated neurotransmission in a network of regions implicated in emotion, stress regulation, and the pathophysiology of MDD, namely, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) - striato - amygdalo - thalamic network. The hypothesis has been formulated on the basis of published research and preliminary data. The investigators will test the hypothesis by performing structural and functional neuroimaging in 60 untreated 13-18 year-old adolescents with mild to moderate depression. The proposed research is significant, because it is expected to elucidate the mechanism of action of OLP and advance the understanding of the neural underpinnings of positive expectations in adolescent depression.

    at UCSF

  • Brain Stimulation on Higher-Order Cognition

    open to eligible people ages 18-50

    The purpose of this study is to better understand the neural correlates of higher-order cognition, both in the healthy brain and in schizophrenia, and to determine how these mechanisms are modulated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) at frontal and occipital scalp sites. Testing the effects of tDCS at these scalp sites on cognitive task performance will help us understand the roles of the brain regions corresponding to these sites during higher-order cognitive processing (language comprehension, cognitive control, and related attention and memory processes). Behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG) measures will be used to assess cognitive performance. The investigator's overarching hypothesis is that stimulating prefrontal circuits with tDCS can improve cognitive control performance, and ultimately performance on a range of cognitive tasks, as compared to stimulating a different cortical region (occipital cortex) or using sham stimulation. This study is solely intended as basic research in order to understand brain function in healthy individuals and individuals with schizophrenia. This study is not intended to diagnose, cure or treat schizophrenia or any other disease.

    at UC Davis

  • Biologic Association Between Metabolic Magnetic Resonance-positron Emission Tomograph (MR-PET) and Tissue Measures of Glycolysis in Brain Tumors of Infiltrating Glioblastoma Cells

    open to eligible people ages 18 years and up

    The purpose of this project is to validate a new combined MRI and PET imaging technique as a biomarker or measure of glycolysis in brain tumors. To accomplish this, the investigators propose obtaining image-guided measures of tissue pH and biopsied tissue in tumor areas selected for bulk resection surgery. Investigators will then correlate the imaging measurements with pH, RNA expression, protein expression, and bioenergetics measurements of key glycolytic enzymes.

    at UCLA

  • Determining the Role of Social Reward Learning in Social Anhedonia

    open to eligible people ages 18-35

    This is a clinical trial study that aims to evaluate the specificity of the relationship between reduced sensitivity to social reward and social anhedonia at both behavioral and neural levels. Individuals who recently experienced their first-episode psychosis will be recruited. Participants will be randomized 1:1 to motivational interviewing or a time- and format-matched control probe. At pre- and post-probe, participants will perform two social reward learning tasks in the scanner. With this design feature, we will examine the relationship between sensitivity to social reward and reduced subjective experience of social pleasure at both the behavioral and neural levels.

    at UCLA

  • Dynamic Neural Systems Underlying Social-emotional Functions in Older Adults

    open to eligible people ages 60-120

    Assess the impact of a remote, app-delivered digital meditation intervention on emotional well-being of lonely older adults. Neuroimaging and autonomic physiology will be used to assess the neural correlates of the intervention.

    at UCSF

  • Effects of Hypoxic Breathwork

    open to eligible people ages 18-45

    This project will study changes that occur during a short period of intensive daily slow-paced breathing and breath hold practice (i.e., "breathwork"). On the first and last days of the week-long practice, investigators will conduct high-density EEG recordings during breathwork to evaluate spectral power, coherence, and causality dynamics of the brain when it is naïve to breathwork and after adaptation to a breathwork practice. Breath, blood, urine, saliva, stool samples, biometric data, and sleep EEG will be collected before the start of daily breathwork practice and again after 1 week of breathwork practice to examine the effect of breathwork on full body biochemistry, molecular biology, and sleep. Investigators will also use questionnaires to assess the impact of breathwork on stress and sleep quality.

    at UCSD

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) With Hyperpolarized Pyruvate (13C) as Diagnostic Tool in Advanced Prostate Cancer

    open to eligible males ages 18 years and up

    This is a prospective imaging study evaluating the utility of baseline metabolic MR imaging as a diagnostic and response monitoring tool in patients with advanced prostate cancer. Preliminary pre-clinical and clinical data demonstrates the ability of HP C-13 pyruvate/metabolic MR imaging to detect high-grade prostate cancer, including cancer with neuroendocrine differentiation, as well as provide early evidence of metabolic response and resistance following application of systemic therapies for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer patients. In the proposed study, the investigators aim is to extend the initial clinical results and further develop HP C-13 MRI as an imaging modality in advanced prostate cancer.

    at UCSF

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Improving Knowledge of Brain Tumor Biology in Patients With Resectable Glioblastoma

    open to eligible people ages 18 years and up

    This clinical trial uses a type of imaging scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study brain tumor biology in patients with glioblastoma that can be removed by surgery (resectable). Malignant gliomas are the second leading cause of cancer mortality in people under the age of 35 in the United States. Glioblastoma is a type of malignant glioma with very poor patient prognosis. There are currently only about 3 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of glioblastoma, one of them being administration of bevacizumab, which is very expensive. It is the most widely used treatment for glioblastoma with dramatic results. However, previous clinical trials have not demonstrated an overall survival benefit across all patient populations with glioblastoma that has returned after treatment (recurrent). The study aims to identify which patients who will benefit from bevacizumab therapy by observing MRI images and corresponding imaging biomarkers.

    at UCLA

  • Neural and Physiological Correlates of Psychedelic Sub-states

    open to eligible people ages 21-70

    The main purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the distinct mental states and physical reactions that can arise during a psychedelic experience. By repeatedly assessing the same participants in an MRI while under the effects of psilocybin, the investigators want to identify reliable brain and body reactions arising during these psychedelic experiences. It is hoped that this will provide an insight to inspire future research on psilocybin and related psychedelics as well as inform on their therapeutic action. This study will involve up to 12 healthy volunteers with previous psychedelic experience. Participants in this study will be given four doses of psilocybin, with breaks of at least seven days in between dosing visits. The first dosing visit will feature a 10 mg dose of psilocybin, which can be considerate a low to moderate dose, whereas the remaining three dosing visits will feature 25 mg psilocybin, a high dose that is consistent with the dosage chosen for several modern clinical trials with psilocybin. From the initial in-person screening visit to the final follow-up, participants will be in this study for approximately 6-12 weeks and visit the research site 5 times. The first visit will be an in-person screening visit, during which the investigators will assess participants' eligibility to be enrolled. There will be 4 subsequent visits to the scan center for dosing and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning, and there will be a final remote follow up. Each of the four dosing visits will include four periods of lying within the MRI scanner for scanning, each of these 'in-scanner' sessions will last for ~ 45 minutes. Actual scans, which are also called 'runs' last for ~ 12 mins. During these 'runs', the investigators will ask participants two brief questions about how positive or negative their current experience is every 100 seconds. They will be able to record their answers using a button box which they will be operating with their hand. One day after each dosing visit, the investigators will schedule a phone call with the participant to check how they are doing and perform an informal interview focused on their experience while under the effects of psilocybin.

    at UCSF

  • Phenotyping Response to Spinal Cord Stimulation in Chronic Low Back Pain

    open to eligible people ages 18-80

    Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a debilitating condition and costly to treat. Long-term drug treatment often fails due to habituation, breakthrough of pain, or adverse effects of drug treatment. Opioid use to manage this pain has contributed to the opioid epidemic. Spinal cord stimulators have emerged as a promising treatment and reduces reliance on drugs. However, response to spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is unpredictable. It is difficult to predict which patients will respond positively to SCS because the physiological mechanism for treatment responsiveness is unclear. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate how spinal cord stimulators affect functional measures in patients with CLBP, including functional MRI, neurophysiology, gait analysis, and questionnaires. The results of this study can lead to the widespread adoption of spinal cord stimulators as a safe and effective therapy for CLBP, reducing the reliance on opioids and mitigating the opioid epidemic's impact.

    at UCLA

  • Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative 4

    open to eligible people ages 55-90

    Since its launch in 2004, the overarching aim of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) Study has been to validate biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical trials. ADNI4 continues the previously funded ADNI1, ADNI-GO, ADNI2, and ADNI3 studies that have combined public/private collaborations between academia and industry to determine the relationships between the clinical, cognitive, imaging, genetic and biochemical biomarker characteristics of the entire spectrum of AD.

    at UC Davis UC Irvine UCLA UCSD UCSF

  • Cancer Therapy Effects on the Heart

    open to eligible people ages 13-39

    Anthracycline chemotherapies (e.g. doxorubicin, daunorubicin) are commonly given to treat pediatric cancer, and carry a risk of cardiotoxicity. Over the long term, children who receive these therapies have an increased risk of heart failure and early cardiovascular death. However, current strategies for identifying patients who are at risk prior to the development of significant changes in heart function are limited. This study will focus on imaging markers of cardiac injury and dysfunction with the goal of developing improved diagnostic tests and treatment strategies.

    at UCSD

  • Characterizing Cognitive Decline in Late Life Depression: The ADNI Depression Project

    open to eligible people ages 65 years and up

    The purpose of this research study is to characterize the mechanisms contributing to cognitive impairment and accelerated cognitive decline in Late Life Depression (LLD). This is a non-randomized, observational, non-treatment study that originally launched in 2015, enrolling 133 participants. From the originally enrolled participants, the continuation of the ADNI-D study will enroll 120 participants which will include following participants from the original (parent) protocol and enrollment of new participants for a period of 30 months. Data from an additional 300 non-depressed subjects will be used from ADNI studies for comparison. Depression history, symptom severity and health information will be collected at the initial visit to determine eligibility. An magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, as well as amyloid (florbetapir) and tau (flortaucipr) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging will be conducted at San Francisco VA. Collection of plasma and serum for biomarkers, clinical assessments and cognitive assessments will be conducted at two time points. Blood samples will also be collected for genetic analysis.

    at UCSF

  • Hyperpolarized Pyruvate (13C) Magnetic Resonance Imaging In Patients With Fatty Liver Disease

    open to eligible people ages 18 years and up

    The recent development of dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) technology for hyperpolarized (HP) 13C imaging offers a promising new avenue for non-invasively accessing fundamental metabolic changes associated with the progression of fatty liver disease in vivo. The purpose of this pilot study is to optimize sequence parameters for hyperpolarized 13C acquisition in the human liver and determine which metabolic changes can be seen in humans with simple, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) when compared to healthy volunteers.

    at UCSF

  • Longitudinal Prospective Study of Neurocognition & Neuroimaging in Primary BT Patients

    open to eligible people ages 18-99

    In this proposal, the investigators introduce a novel, translational study to prospectively examine primary brain tumor patients undergoing fractionated radiation therapy to the brain. Quantitative neuroimaging, radiation dose information, and directed neurocognitive testing will be acquired through this study to improve understanding of cognitive changes associated with radiation dosage to non-targeted tissue, and will provide the basis for evidence-based cognitive- sparing brain radiotherapy.

    at UCSD

  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer

    open to eligible people ages 18 years and up

    This is a single-center, prospective pilot study evaluating feasibility and efficacy of incorporating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) simulation into the planning of radiation treatment (RT) for breast cancer.

    at UCSF

  • Developing an EEG Paradigm to Study Prediction Error in Anorexia Nervosa

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    Adolescent anorexia nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder associated with intense fear of weight gain, food refusal, and severe weight loss. AN is the third most common chronic illness among adolescent females with a mortality rate 12 times higher than expected for females 15-24 years old. Little is known about biomarkers in adolescent AN. Neuroimaging studies have repeatedly suggested altered reward processing in AN including in studies using the dopamine associated prediction error (PE) model. The brain PE response is elicited during unexpected receipt or omission of reward stimuli and thought to reflect the functionality of brain dopamine circuits. This is an important research direction as the dopamine system can be manipulated pharmacologically. In ill and recovered adult AN, unexpected or randomly applied sucrose taste stimuli evoked higher insular and striatal responses and unexpected omission or receipt of monetary or taste reward was associated with a similar response pattern in adolescent AN. PE was also inversely related to weight gain in treatment. Thus, PE brain response promises to be an important biological marker for adolescent AN with predictive value for treatment outcome. However, functional brain imaging is costly, prohibitive for instance for individuals with braces or other metal in their body and only available at certain centers. In order to study PE in AN in larger scale studies, a more practical approach and method need to be developed. In this application, we will use the exploratory/developmental R21 mechanism to develop a study protocol using electroencephalography (EEG) to study PE signals in adolescent AN. Recent studies in healthy individuals support that this is a valid approach. Our primary goal for this study is to test the feasibility of the use of EEG for prediction error and reversal learning studies in AN with the longer term goal of replacing fMRI that is costly and associated with frequent participant rule out. In Aim 1. we test the feasibility of adapting a computational taste PE reinforcement learning paradigm from fMRI to EEG in adolescents with AN and healthy controls. We expect that we will find internal consistency of taste PE brain response across fMRI and EEG in adolescents with AN as well as age-matched healthy controls, within each group. We further expect that we will find preliminary evidence that the EEG paradigm will be able to discriminate the AN group from the HC adolescents based on feedback related negativity and higher event-related potential amplitudes, which will correlate with fMRI PE brain response. In Aim 2., we test whether a monetary PE paradigm will show similar EEG brain response as taste PE in Aim 1. to establish the generalizability of EEG taste and non-taste paradigms. The development of an EEG based reward PE study paradigm will enable us in the future to conduct large-scale studies that will be less costly and independent from brain imaging centers that are only available to a small subset of adolescents with AN.

    at UCSD

  • 24/7 EEG SubQ System for Ultra Long-Term Recording of Patients With Epilepsy Involving the Temporal Lobe Region.

    Sorry, not currently recruiting here

    The 24/7 EEG™ SubQ system will be compared to simultaneously recorded video-EEG in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (gold standard) and to self-reported seizure log books throughout 12 weeks of outpatient EEG recording. The present study is a 12-week open-label, prospective study with a paired, comparative design for pivotal evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of the 24/7 EEGTM SubQ system in subjects with epilepsy involving the temporal lobe region . 2-5 sites in Europe Up to 10 sites in US

    at UCLA

  • Hyperpolarized (HP) 13C Pyruvate Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for Response Monitoring to Neoadjuvant Abiraterone

    Sorry, not yet accepting patients

    This study will evaluate the use of hyperpolarized 13C MRI (HP 13C MRI) and the HP-derived 13C pyruvate-to-lactate conversion rate constant (kPL) as an early response biomarker in men with treatment-naïve, high-risk, localized or locally advanced prostate cancer receiving neoadjuvant therapy.

    at UCSF

  • Stereotactic MRI-guided On-table Adaptive Radiation Therapy (SMART) for Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    High-dose magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guided hypofractionated radiation therapy delivered using daily adaptive dose planning has been shown in a retrospective study to result in improved overall survival, relative to patients receiving lower radiation doses, in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer, without increasing the rate of serious gastrointestinal toxicity. The goal of the proposed trial is to investigative in a controlled, prospective manner the robustness of this outcome, and to track quality of life over a 5-year trial period.

    at UCLA

  • 4 Repeat Tauopathy Neuroimaging Initiative

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    The purpose of this study is to evaluate several different tests, including brain imaging, eye movement testing, body fluid samples, measurements of memory and other thinking abilities, and measures of functional independence in the hope that this information can be used to guide diagnosis and treatment of PSP and CBD in the future. Recent advances in our understanding of the biological causes of these diseases offer hope for new treatments. As such treatments are developed, sensitive and specific biological measurements (biomarkers) will be needed to provide precise and direct measures of the state of the brain, which will improve the statistical power of clinical trials. Brain imaging with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has previously been used to measure disease-related changes in the brain. The goal of this study is to identify the best methods of analysis (including eye movements, imaging, and behavioral measures) for tracking PSP and CBD over time. In addition, certain biomarkers in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid might also be useful for following these diseases over time. This study will examine the value of blood and CSF biomarkers relative to brain imaging and functional measures.

    at UCSF

  • 4-Repeat Tauopathy Neuroimaging Initiative - Cycle 2

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    The goal of this study is to identify the most reliable methods of analysis for tracking CBD, PSP, and o/vPSP over time. The results from this study may be used in the future to calculate statistical power for clinical drug trials. The study will also provide information about the relative value of novel imaging techniques for diagnosis, as well as the value of imaging techniques versus testing of blood, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) 'biomarkers'.

    at UCSD UCSF

  • CT-guided Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy and MRI-guided Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy for Prostate Cancer, MIRAGE Study

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    This phase III trial studies compares CT-guided stereotactic body radiation therapy and MRI-guided stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in treating prostate cancer. Image-guided SBRT is a standard treatment for prostate cancer, which combines imaging of the cancer within the body with the delivery of therapeutic radiation doses produced on a linear accelerator machine. Imaging modalities for image-guided SBRT can be either computed tomography imaging (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or a combination of the two. This research is being done to help determine whether there are benefits to MRI-guidance over CT-guidance in patients who are receiving the same radiation dose by SBRT to treat prostate cancer.

    at UCLA

Our lead scientists for Neuroimaging research studies include .

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