Effects of Ketamine on Mentalizing and Metacognition in Healthy Volunteers
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2020-09-27
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Antipsychotic medication shows generally good effect sizes when looking at reduction of
positive psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, such as paranoia or delusion. However, social
functioning often remains deficient in patients, meaning dopamine-receptor antagonists are
not sufficient in treatment of people with schizophrenia.
A naturalistic video-based paradigm, named MASC has been used in the past to model over- and
undermentalizing in patients with autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, since deficits
in mentalizing can be explained by either overinterpreting a social situation (e.g. paranoid
thoughts about intentions of others towards self) or by lacking the skill to read intentions
of others.
To find out whether experimental manipulation via a non-competetive N-methyl-D-aspartate
antagonist can induce difficulties with social cognition similar to those observed in people
with schizophrenia, the investigators will conduct a RCT applying either ketamine or a
placebo intravenously while participants are completing the above mentioned mentalizing task
in the fMRI-scanner.