Trial reportBiological psychiatry2010
Diminished neural processing of aversive and rewarding stimuli during selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment.
Trial report in Biological psychiatry, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT03966859 (The Effect of Seven-Day Atorvastatin Administration on Emotional Processing, Reward Processing, and Inflammation in Healthy Volunteers), which is not on this map. Cited by 176 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
The Effect of Seven-Day Atorvastatin Administration on Emotional Processing, Reward Processing, and Inflammation in Healthy Volunteers
Who cites it
176 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 361 citations in OpenAlex.
- Common and disorder-specific aberrant activation during reward and loss processing in major depressive disorder and addiction: a meta-analysis of fMRI studies.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Great Expectations: A Critical Review of and Suggestions for the Study of Reward Processing as a Cause and Predictor of Depression.Biological psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Neural Correlates of Anti-appetite Medications: An fMRI Meta-analysis.Current neuropharmacology · 2021Pooled it
- Characterizing anhedonia: A systematic review of neuroimaging across the subtypes of reward processing deficits in depression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Citalopram versus other anti-depressive agents for depression.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2012Pooled it
- Investigating the effect of increased dopamine signaling on cerebral blood flow in Major Depressive Disorder: a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Trial
- The behavioural effects of the serotonin 1A receptor agonist buspirone on reward processing in healthy volunteers: A randomised, placebo-controlled study.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2026Trial
- Amygdala activity after subchronic escitalopram administration in healthy volunteers: A pharmaco-functional magnetic resonance imaging study.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2024Trial
- General and anxiety-linked influences of acute serotonin reuptake inhibition on neural responses associated with attended visceral sensation.Translational psychiatry · 2024Trial
- Personality change in a trial of psilocybin therapy v. escitalopram treatment for depression.Psychological medicine · 2024Trial
- Positive affect treatment targets reward sensitivity: A randomized controlled trial.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2023Trial
- Chronic escitalopram in healthy volunteers has specific effects on reinforcement sensitivity: a double-blind, placebo-controlled semi-randomised study.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Neural mechanisms and predictors of SSRI and CBT treatment of anxiety: A randomized trial focused on emotion and cognitive processing.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2021Trial
- A single dose of escitalopram blunts the neural response in the thalamus and caudate during monetary loss.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · 2021Trial
- Striatal activation to monetary reward is associated with alcohol reward sensitivity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Modulation of anterior cingulate cortex reward and penalty signalling in medication-naive young-adult subjects with depressive symptoms following acute dose lurasidone.Psychological medicine · 2019Trial
- Striatal dopamine D2/3 receptor-mediated neurotransmission in major depression: Implications for anhedonia, anxiety and treatment response.European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2017Trial
- Blunted insula activation reflects increased risk and reward seeking as an interaction of testosterone administration and the MAOA polymorphism.Human brain mapping · 2017Trial
- Bupropion Administration Increases Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Dorso-Medial Prefrontal Cortex.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2017Trial
- Beyond negative valence: 2-week administration of a serotonergic antidepressant enhances both reward and effort learning signals.PLoS biology · 2017Trial
116 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSelective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are popular medications for anxiety and depression, but their effectiveness, particularly in patients with prominent symptoms of loss of motivation and pleasure, has been questioned. There are few studies of the effect of SSRIs on neural reward mechanisms in humans.
methodsWe studied 45 healthy participants who were randomly allocated to receive the SSRI citalopram, the noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor reboxetine, or placebo for 7 days in a double-blind, parallel group design. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural response to rewarding (sight and/or flavor of chocolate) and aversive stimuli (sight of moldy strawberries and/or an unpleasant strawberry taste) on the final day of drug treatment.
resultsCitalopram reduced activation to the chocolate stimuli in the ventral striatum and the ventral medial/orbitofrontal cortex. In contrast, reboxetine did not suppress ventral striatal activity and in fact increased neural responses within medial orbitofrontal cortex to reward. Citalopram also decreased neural responses to the aversive stimuli conditions in key "punishment" areas such as the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Reboxetine produced a similar, although weaker effect.
conclusionsOur findings are the first to show that treatment with SSRIs can diminish the neural processing of both rewarding and aversive stimuli. The ability of SSRIs to decrease neural responses to reward might underlie the questioned efficacy of SSRIs in depressive conditions characterized by decreased motivation and anhedonia and could also account for the experience of emotional blunting described by some patients during SSRI treatment.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.