Multimodal Differences in Effort-based Decision-Making in Depression

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious condition that causes long-term symptoms such as feeling sad, losing interest in activities, and having thoughts of self-harm. Difficulty in making an effort is a key factor in functional impairment. Current methods to evaluate this difficulty use clinical assessments and computer-based tasks, but there is a gap between the measurements and real-life behavior. To address this, the study team proposes creating an instrumented behavioral test, HORMES, to objectively assess reduced motivation during everyday activities and measure physiological responses. The study will examine differences in brain activity, autonomic system function, and metabolic energy expenditure in patients with major depression during a decision-making task that involves physical effort.

NCT Number	NCT06648460
Lead Sponsor	Georgia Institute of Technology Collaborators: Emory University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Conditions	Depression, Anhedonia
Enrollment	90 participants
Start Date	2026-08-01
Primary Completion	2029-08-31 (estimated)
Study Completion	2030-09-30 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2026-06-03