Effects of inflammation on behaviour and the autonomic nervous system
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The effects of inflammation on cognition, mood and the autonomic nervous system.
IRAS ID
186868
Contact name
Jet Veldhuijzen van Zanten
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 1 months, 1 days
Research summary
Inflammation has been shown to lead to changes in mood and cognitive function, and it can also influence the autonomic nervous system, which is one of the factors that controls your heart rate. However, it is not known how inflammation, mood, cognitive function and autonomic nervous system are related to each other and interact with each other. The proposed study will look at this in more detail. Healthy young adults will be asked to complete a series of tasks to assess cognitive function, and during these tasks heart function will be recorded. Participants will be asked to complete these tasks twice. Before one of the testing sessions, the participants will be given a typhoid vaccine, which will lead to a mild inflammatory response. Before the other testing session, the participants will be given a saline (salty water) injection, which will be the control condition. We will compare the responses to the tasks in the two conditions will be compared. We hypothesise that inflammation will decrease mood and alter the behavioural and autonomic nervous system performance on the tasks.
REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0437
Date of REC Opinion
26 Jan 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion