Understanding Effort and Fatigue
This study is looking for healthy right-handed adults aged 18 to 35 to understand how people experience and value effort, especially when they are feeling tired. You would participate in tasks designed to create cognitive (mental) fatigue and physical fatigue, such as repeatedly performing a spatial attention task or a grip force task. Researchers will also use rewarding stimuli to see how motivation affects your effort choices. The main goal is to measure how much effort you feel these tasks require, both before and after becoming fatigued. This study aims to enroll 185 participants and is not currently recruiting.
- Study design
- This is an interventional study with a planned enrollment of 185 participants. The study aims to understand how people value effort and how fatigue and motivation influence this.
- What's involved
- Not specified in the trial record.
- Compensation
- Not stated in the trial record.
- Follow-up
- Your subjective effort parameters will be measured on day 1.
AI-generated from the public study record. Only the study team can confirm whether you're eligible — confirm details with them before making decisions.
Behavioral and Neural Representations of Subjective Effort Cost
At a glance
Conditions
Where it's being run
1 sites across 1 statesStudy leadership
- Vikram S. Chib, PhD · PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR · Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Who to contact
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Do you actually qualify for this trial?
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Inclusion
Exclusion
What this trial measures
- Mean of cognitive subjective effort parameters (from behavioral choice data)1 day
Choice data will be fit to a model of the form u(x) = x\^rho. The parameter rho is indicative of individuals' subjective preferences for effort. We will test if participants cognitive subjective effort parameters will be significantly different than zero. Effort levels will be expressed as a percentage of each individual's maximum exertion capacity. This will ensure that comparisons can be made between participants.
- Differences between cognitive subjective effort parameters before and after fatigue (from behavioral choice data)1 day
Choice data will be fit to a model of the form u(x) = x\^rho. The parameter rho is indicative of individuals' subjective preferences for effort. We will test if participants cognitive subjective effort parameters will be significantly different when comparing parameters extracted from pre-fatigue and post-fatigue choices. Effort levels will be expressed as a percentage of each individual's maximum exertion capacity. This will ensure that comparisons can be made between participants.
- Mean of physical subjective effort parameters (from behavioral choice data)1 days
Choice data will be fit to a model of the form u(x) = x\^rho. The parameter rho is indicative of individuals' subjective preferences for effort. We will test if participants physical subjective effort parameters will be significantly different than zero. Effort levels will be expressed as a percentage of each individual's maximum exertion capacity. This will ensure that comparisons can be made between participants.
- Differences between physical subjective effort parameters before and after fatigue (from behavioral choice data)1 day
Choice data will be fit to a model of the form u(x) = x\^rho. The parameter rho is indicative of individuals' subjective preferences for effort. We will test if participants physical subjective effort parameters will be significantly different when comparing parameters extracted from pre-fatigue and post-fatigue choices. Effort levels will be expressed as a percentage of each individual's maximum exertion capacity. This will ensure that comparisons can be made between participants.
- Difference between cognitive effort cost parameters between the low and high reward stimuli1 day
Choice data will be fit to a model of the form u(x) = x\^rho. The parameter rho is indicative of individuals' subjective preferences for effort. We will test if participants subjective effort parameters will be significantly different when comparing parameters extracted from low and high reward stimuli trials. Effort levels will be expressed as a percentage of each individual's maximum exertion capacity. This will ensure that comparisons can be made between participants.
- Difference between physical effort cost parameters between the low and high reward stimuli1 day
Choice data will be fit to a model of the form u(x) = x\^rho. The parameter rho is indicative of individuals' subjective preferences for effort. We will test if participants subjective effort parameters will be significantly different when comparing parameters extracted from low and high reward stimuli trials. Effort levels will be expressed as a percentage of each individual's maximum exertion capacity. This will ensure that comparisons can be made between participants.
- Regions of the brain encoding cognitive effort1 day
We will use a general linear model to examine brain activity that is positively and negatively correlated with chosen cognitive effort value.
- Regions of the brain encoding physical effort1 day
We will use a general linear model to examine brain activity that is positively and negatively correlated with chosen physical effort value.
- Regions of the brain encoding changes cognitive effort value following cognitive fatigue1 day
We will use a general linear model to examine brain activity that is positively and negatively correlated with fatigue-induced changes in cognitive effort value.
- Regions of the brain encoding changes physical effort value following physical fatigue1 day
We will use a general linear model to examine brain activity that is positively and negatively correlated with fatigue-induced changes in physical effort value.
- Regions of the brain encoding differences in cognitive effort value resulting from reward-induced changes in motivation1 day
We will use a general linear model to examine brain activity that is positively and negatively correlated with motivation-induced changes in cognitive effort value.
- Regions of the brain encoding differences in physical effort value resulting from reward-induced changes in motivation1 day
We will use a general linear model to examine brain activity that is positively and negatively correlated with motivation-induced changes in physical effort value.