Trial reportPsychopharmacology2012
The effects of acute tryptophan depletion on costly information sampling: impulsivity or aversive processing?
Trial report in Psychopharmacology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Active information sampling in health and disease.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Reduced serotonergic transmission alters sensitivity to cost and reward via 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors in monkeys.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Transdiagnostic Anxiety-Related Increases in Information Sampling are Associated With Altered Valuation.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- A neural mechanism for conserved value computations integrating information and rewards.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Boosting Serotonin Increases Information Gathering by Reducing Subjective Cognitive Costs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Testing the validity and reliability of the Matching Familiar Figures Test-2021: An updated behavioral measure of reflection-impulsivity.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Selective effects of serotonin on choices to gather more information.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2021Article
- Self-reported and neurocognitive impulsivity in obsessive-compulsive disorder.Comprehensive psychiatry · 2020Article
- The Role of Tryptophan and Tyrosine in Executive Function and Reward Processing.International journal of tryptophan research : IJTR · 2020Review
- Dopamine manipulations drive changes in information sampling in healthy volunteers.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Nicotinamide and Demographic and Disease transitions: Moderation is Best.International journal of tryptophan research : IJTR · 2019Review
- Peripheral Serotonin 1B Receptor Transcription Predicts the Effect of Acute Tryptophan Depletion on Risky Decision-Making.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2017Article
- Behavioral and emotional adverse events of drugs frequently used in the treatment of bipolar disorders: clinical and theoretical implications.International journal of bipolar disorders · 2016Article
- Article
- The good, the bad and the brain: Neural correlates of appetitive and aversive values underlying decision making.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2015Article
- Theory of choice in bandit, information sampling and foraging tasks.PLoS computational biology · 2015Article
- New developments in human neurocognition: clinical, genetic, and brain imaging correlates of impulsivity and compulsivity.CNS spectrums · 2014Review
- Impulsivity and apathy in Parkinson's disease.Journal of neuropsychology · 2013Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleThe neurotransmitter serotonin (5-HT) has been implicated in both aversive processing and impulsivity. Reconciling these accounts, recent studies have demonstrated that 5-HT is important for punishment-induced behavioural inhibition. These studies focused on situations where actions lead directly to punishments. However, decision-making often involves making tradeoffs between small 'local' costs and larger 'global' losses.
objectiveWe aimed to distinguish whether 5-HT promotes avoidance of local losses, global losses, or both, in contrast to an overall effect on reflection impulsivity. We further examined the influence of individual differences in sub-clinical depression, anxiety and impulsivity on global and local loss avoidance.
methodsHealthy volunteers (N = 21) underwent an acute tryptophan depletion procedure in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design. We measured global and local loss avoidance in a decision-making task where subjects could sample information at a small cost to avoid making incorrect decisions, which resulted in large losses.
resultsTryptophan depletion removed the suppressive effects of small local costs on information sampling behaviour. Sub-clinical depressive symptoms produced effects on information sampling similar to (but independent from) those of tryptophan depletion. Dispositional anxiety was related to global loss avoidance. However, trait impulsivity was unrelated to information sampling.
conclusionsThe current findings are consistent with recent theoretical work that characterises 5-HT as pruning a tree of potential decisions, eliminating options expected to lead to aversive outcomes. Our results extend this account by proposing that 5-HT promotes reflexive avoidance of relatively immediate aversive outcomes, potentially at the expense of more globally construed future losses.
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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.