RecruitingNCT06659731

Quantitative Sensory Testing to Study Pain Perception in Autism

Pain Perception in Autism. Study Through Quantitative Sensory Testing and Psychophysiological Correlates

Sponsor

IRCCS Eugenio Medea

Enrollment

50 participants

Start Date

Jul 17, 2024

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Conditions

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Summary

This study aims at assess sensory perception, and pain perception, in neurodivergent children and adolescent in the autism spectrum. To achieve this goal, the quantitive sensory testing (QST), a controlled and replicable protocol, will be used, to assess perception in different sensory modalities: heat sensations, mechanical detection threshold and pain threshold. As secondary aim, the cortical processing of thermal painful stimuli will be collected through electroencephalography (EEG) in order to investigate if there are differences in the cortical processing of painful stimuli between clinical sample and control sample, and if it could be associated with differences in the subjective experience between the two groups. Finally, it will be explored the association between such differences, and indexes of psychopathology and dispositional measures.

Eligibility

Min Age: 5 YearsMax Age: 17 Years

Inclusion Criteria5

Children and adolescent
age between 5 and 17 years old
Autism diagnosis according to DSM-V criteria
healthy children and adolescent (without neurological, and psychiatric, diagnoses)
age between 5 and 17 years old

Exclusion Criteria7

Comorbidities with (for the clinical sample) or diagnosis of (for the control sample):
peripheral neuropaties;
psychiatric diagnosis as psychosis,
Tourette Syndrome,
neurological diagnoses as epilepsy,
sensory deficit or loss;
genetic diseases

Interested in this trial?

Get notified about updates and connect with the research team.

Interventions

OTHERQuantitative Sensory testing (QST)

The QST protocol (Rolke et al., 2006; Blankenburg et al., 2010), implies the administration of 7 short sensory test in order to measure up to 13 parameters, which can be grouped as follows: thermal detection thresholds for the perception of cold, warm and paradoxical heat sensations, thermal pain thresholds for cold and hot stimuli, mechanical detection thresholds for touch and vibration, mechanical pain thresholds and sensitivity for pinprick and blunt pressure, vibration detection threshold and pressure pain threshold.

OTHEREEG

EEG recording at rest and while receiving heat stimuli to study cortical processing of salient thermal stimuli. Up to 30 painful thermal stimuli, will be delivered to the patients' hand dorsum in order to register contact heat evoked potentials (CHEPs).