Trial reportBiological psychiatry2012
Effects of acute tryptophan depletion on prefrontal-amygdala connectivity while viewing facial signals of aggression.
Trial report in Biological psychiatry, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 57 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
57 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 148 citations in OpenAlex.
- Revisiting the serotonin-aggression relation in humans: a meta-analysis.Psychological bulletin · 2013Pooled it
- Should perception of emotions be classified according to threat detection rather than emotional valence? An updated meta-analysis for a whole-brain atlas of emotional faces processing.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPNPooled it
- Oxytocinergic Modulation of Stress-Associated Amygdala-Hippocampus Pathways in Humans Is Mediated by Serotonergic Mechanisms.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Serotonin depletion impairs both Pavlovian and instrumental reversal learning in healthy humans.Molecular psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Serotonin depletion amplifies distinct human social emotions as a function of individual differences in personality.Translational psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Cortico-limbic connectivity in MAOA-L carriers is vulnerable to acute tryptophan depletion.Human brain mapping · 2017Trial
- Differential effects of L-tryptophan and L-leucine administration on brain resting state functional networks and plasma hormone levels.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- Role of emotional processing in depressive responses to sex-hormone manipulation: a pharmacological fMRI study.Translational psychiatry · 2015Trial
- Attentional control and interpretation of facial expression after oxytocin administration to typically developed male adults.PloS one · 2015Trial
- Serotoninergic effects on judgments and social learning of trustworthiness.Psychopharmacology · 2014Trial
- Trial
- Acute tryptophan depletion increases translational indices of anxiety but not fear: serotonergic modulation of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis?Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2012Trial
- State and trait serotonin variations interact to shape the intrinsic connectivity and gradient architecture of the brain - a combined TPH2 genetics and tryptophan depletion study in men.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Role of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-left primary motor cortex interaction in motor inhibition in Parkinson's disease.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Multimodal investigations of emotional face processing and social trait judgment of faces.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Review
- Functional connectivity between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex underlies processing of emotion ambiguity.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- Elevated levels of serotonin 5-HTEuropean archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2023Article
- Negative Influence of the Hunger State on Rule-observance Behavior in Mice.Experimental neurobiology · 2023Article
- Constitutive depletion of brain serotonin differentially affects rats' social and cognitive abilities.iScience · 2023Article
- Behavioral, cortical and autonomic effects of single-dose escitalopram on the induction and regulation of fear and disgust: Comparison with single-session psychological emotion regulation with reappraisal.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundReduced levels of serotonin (5-HT) within prefrontal cortex (PFC)-amygdala circuits have long been implicated in impulsive aggression. However, whether lowering 5-HT alters the dynamic interplay between the PFC and the amygdala has not been directly tested in humans. It is known that manipulating 5-HT via acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) causes variable effects on brain responses to a variety of emotional stimuli, but it remains unclear whether ATD affects functional connectivity in neural networks involved in processing social signals of aggression (e.g., angry faces).
methodsThirty healthy individuals were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled ATD study. On each treatment, brain responses to angry, sad, and neutral faces were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two methods (psycho-physiological-interaction in a general linear model and dynamic causal modeling) were used to assess the impact of ATD on the functional connectivity between PFC and amygdala.
resultsData from 19 subjects were available for the final analyses. A whole-brain psycho-physiological-interaction in a general linear model showed that ATD significantly modulated the connectivity between the amygdala and two PFC regions (ventral anterior cingulate cortex and ventrolateral PFC) when processing angry vs. neutral and angry vs. sad but not sad vs. neutral faces. Dynamic causal modeling corroborated and extended these findings by showing that 5-HT depletion reduced the influence of processing angry vs. neutral faces on circuits within PFC and on PFC-amygdala pathways.
conclusionsWe provide strong support for neurobiological accounts positing that 5-HT significantly influences PFC-amygdala circuits implicated in aggression and other affective behaviors.
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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.