Recruiting

Planning Mechanisms

Sponsor:

New York University

Code:

NCT07293637

Conditions

Decision Making

Cognition

Mental Simulation

Problem Solving

Planning

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18 - 64

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

Four-in-a-Row Task

Study Details

Brief summary:

Planning is the ability to think ahead by considering possible future actions and their consequences. This research study aims to understand how the brain supports multi-step planning by testing whether people simulate promising future move sequences while deciding what to do next. Healthy adult volunteers will learn and play a strategy game called "Four-in-a-Row" (similar to Connect Four). Participants will complete two sessions on successive days: an online behavioral training/playing session and an in-person brain-recording session at New York University. During the brain-recording session, participants will view mid-game board positions and choose the best move while the study team records brain activity (using magnetoencephalography \[MEG\] or functional MRI \[fMRI\]) and eye movements. Data from the game and eye tracking will also be used to fit computational models of planning that help interpret the neural measurements.

Conditions

Decision Making

Cognition

Mental Simulation

Problem Solving

Planning

Study ID

NCT07293637

Start date

Jul 10, 2025

Status verified date

Dec, 2025

Completion date

Dec, 2026

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Mar, 2026

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 18 - 64

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • N/A

Exclusion Criteria:

  • History of neurological or psychiatric illness
  • Vulnerable populations

Study Design

Enrollment

50 participants

Anticipated

Intervention Model

Single group

Primary purpose

Basic Science

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: MEG cohort

Single-group study in healthy adults. Participants complete a behavioral training session and then an in-person session performing the Four-in-a-Row planning task during MEG (with an additional MEG localizer task, as applicable).

Interventions

Four-in-a-Row Task

Deterministic, adversarial 'Four-in-a-Row' decision-making task that requires thinking multiple steps ahead. Participants complete a training/gameplay session and a laboratory session in which they choose moves from mid-game positions while behavioral responses (and eye movements, if applicable) are recorded. After the neuroimaging session, participants may play a full match outside the scanner for an additional monetary reward.

Primary outcome measure

  • Percent of moves correctly predicted by the behavioral model [ Time Frame: 1 hour ]
  • MEG activity [ Time Frame: 1 hour ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Locations

New York University

Recruiting

New York, New York, United States, 10012

Contacts

Facility contact, Ph.D.

929-399-9886‬mattar.lab.nyu@gmail.com

Principal Investigator:

Marcelo G Mattar, PhD

More Information

Sponsor

New York University

Last update posted

Jan 8, 2026

Last verified

Dec, 2025

Keywords

  • Four-in-a-Row
  • Planning
  • Tree search
  • Computational modeling
  • Eye tracking
  • MEG
  • fMRI

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by New York University on 2026-01-08.