Neuropharmacological Basis of Social Connection: The Role of Opioids
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01672723. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
From birth we rely on others for comfort and care and derive pleasure from being together. Research from the fields of health psychology, social psychology, and public health converge to highlight the importance of having and maintaining good relationships for overall health. Indeed, having close friends and family and feeling connected to them has been called a basic need, similar to our need for food and water. It may not be a coincidence then that feelings of connection rely on similar systems in the body as other needs that are both basic and highly pleasing and rewarding. For instance, its possible that opioids, a substance in the body associated with pleasant, euphoric feelings, may also be important for connecting with others. This study will examine the role of opioids in feeling connected to others by administering a drug called naltrexone, that effects opioid processing in the body, on perceptions and feelings toward a number of tasks in the lab. Additionally, to assess the effects of naltrexone outside of the lab, participants will complete daily diary responses via text and online surveys. 40 participants will take both placebo and naltrexone. Participants will complete two sessions, one in each drug condition, in which they complete a number of tasks including reading messages on a computer screen, holding a number of objects, and viewing images while undergoing electric shocks. Participants will also complete a daily diary for 14 days while on naltrexone and placebo. Prior to these lab sessions participants will be screened at UCLA's Clinical \& Translational Research Center (CTRC) to ensure that they are healthy and that it is safe for them to take the study drug. We hypothesize that people will report feeling less socially connected when on naltrexone compared to placebo and will show subsequent changes in social behavior outside of the lab.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT01672723
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 34 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 35 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Sep 30, 2012
- Primary completion
- Jan 31, 2014
- Completion
- Jan 31, 2014
- Last update posted
- Jan 13, 2016
2012 – 2014
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of California, Los Angeles Department of Psychology | Los Angeles | California | 90095-1563 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01672723, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Jan 13, 2016 · Synced Sep 6, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT01672723 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.