Trial reportJournal of psychiatric research2011
Cortisol's effects on hippocampal activation in depressed patients are related to alterations in memory formation.
Trial report in Journal of psychiatric research, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Associations between brain activity and endogenous and exogenous cortisol - A systematic review.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2020Pooled it
- Effects of Cortisol Administration on Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Women with Depression.Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging · 2024Trial
- Cortisol effects on brain functional connectivity during emotion processing in women with depression.Journal of affective disorders · 2021Trial
- Exogenous glucocorticoids decrease subgenual cingulate activity evoked by sadness.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2013Trial
- Inter-individual differences in trait negative affect moderate cortisol's effects on memory formation: preliminary findings from two studies.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2012Trial
- From Stress to Neurodegeneration: A New Look at the Pathogenesis of Parkinson's Disease.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- The HPA axis and kynurenine pathway: exploring the role of stress and neuroinflammation in treatment-resistant depression.Pharmacological reports : PR · 2026Review
- The Role of Neuroinflammation in the Comorbidity of Psychiatric Disorders and Internal Diseases.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Association between cardiometabolic index and depression in a stroke population: a cross-sectional study of NHANES.European journal of medical research · 2025Article
- Effect of Probiotic Therapy on Neuropsychiatric Manifestations in Children with Multiple Neurotransmitter Disorders: A Study.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- Cognitive Decline and Its Associated Factors in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A voxel-level brain-wide association study of cortisol at 8 a.m.: Evidence from Cushing's disease.Neurobiology of stress · 2021Article
- Glucocorticoid-induced depression - the role of the dopaminergic system and microRNAs.Postepy psychiatrii neurologii · 2021Review
- Corticosteroid-binding-globulin (CBG)-deficient mice show high pY216-GSK3β and phosphorylated-Tau levels in the hippocampus.PloS one · 2021Article
- Comparative Proteomic Characterization of Ventral Hippocampus in Susceptible and Resilient Rats Subjected to Chronic Unpredictable Stress.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Neural mechanisms of acute stress and trait anxiety in adolescents.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Article
- Neurobiological mechanisms underlying sex-related differences in stress-related disorders: Effects of neuroactive steroids on the hippocampus.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2019Review
- Alterations in Systemic and Cognitive Glucocorticoid Sensitivity in Depression.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2019Article
- Neural Signaling of Cortisol, Childhood Emotional Abuse, and Depression-Related Memory Bias.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2018Article
- Childhood Emotional Abuse Moderates Associations Among Corticomotor White Matter Structure and Stress Neuromodulators in Women With and Without Depression.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Many investigators have hypothesized that brain response to cortisol is altered in depression. However, neural activation in response to exogenously manipulated cortisol elevations has not yet been directly examined in depressed humans. Animal research shows that glucocorticoids have robust effects on hippocampal function, and can either enhance or suppress neuroplastic events in the hippocampus depending on a number of factors. We hypothesized that depressed individuals would show 1) altered hippocampal response to exogenous administration of cortisol, and 2) altered effects of cortisol on learning. In a repeated-measures design, 19 unmedicated depressed and 41 healthy individuals completed two fMRI scans. Fifteen mg oral hydrocortisone (i.e., cortisol) or placebo (order randomized and double-blind) was administered 1 h prior to encoding of emotional and neutral words during fMRI scans. Data analysis examined the effects of cortisol administration on 1) brain activation during encoding, and 2) subsequent free recall for words. Cortisol affected subsequent recall performance in depressed but not healthy individuals. We found alterations in hippocampal response to cortisol in depressed women, but not in depressed men (who showed altered response to cortisol in other regions, including subgenual prefrontal cortex). In both depressed men and women, cortisol's effects on hippocampal function were positively correlated with its effects on recall performance assessed days later. Our data provide evidence that in depressed compared to healthy women, cortisol's effects on hippocampal function are altered. Our data also show that in both depressed men and women, cortisol's effects on emotional memory formation and hippocampal function are related.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.