Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2012
Dopamine-related deficit in reward learning after catecholamine depletion in unmedicated, remitted subjects with bulimia nervosa.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Differential Associations of Dopamine and Serotonin With Reward and Punishment Processes in Humans: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JAMA psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Probing biomarkers and clinical utility of reward learning across species using the Probabilistic Reward Task: 20 years of findings.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Longitudinal analysis of decision-making deficits in binge-eating disorders using drift diffusion modeling.Appetite · 2026Article
- Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making in Depression in Adolescents and Young Adults: Insights from a New Model of the Probabilistic Reward Task.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Impaired belief updating and devaluation in adult women with bulimia nervosa.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- Behavioral Response to Catecholamine Depletion in Individuals With Schizophrenia and Healthy Volunteers.Schizophrenia bulletin open · 2023Article
- Effects of gonadal steroids on reward circuitry function and anhedonia in women with a history of postpartum depression.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Article
- A literature review of dopamine in binge eating.Journal of eating disorders · 2022Review
- Probabilistic Reinforcement Learning and Anhedonia.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2022Article
- Anhedonia in Eating Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2022Article
- Reward learning in unmedicated women with bulimia nervosa: A pilot investigation.Journal of psychiatric research · 2021Article
- Reward Learning Through the Lens of RDoC: a Review of Theory, Assessment, and Empirical Findings in the Eating Disorders.Current psychiatry reports · 2021Review
- Metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 in bulimia nervosa.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Neural Correlates of Impaired Reward-Effort Integration in Remitted Bulimia Nervosa.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2018Article
- Patterns of Management of Patients With Dual Disorder (Psychosis) in Italy: A Survey of Psychiatrists and Other Physicians Focusing on Clinical Practice.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Article
- Investigating the underlying mechanisms of aberrant behaviors in bipolar disorder from patients to models: Rodent and human studies.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2015Review
- Microglia disrupt mesolimbic reward circuitry in chronic pain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2015Article
- The role of BDNF, leptin, and catecholamines in reward learning in bulimia nervosa.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2014Article
- Dopamine depletion attenuates some behavioral abnormalities in a hyperdopaminergic mouse model of bipolar disorder.Journal of affective disorders · 2014Article
- Does a shared neurobiology for foods and drugs of abuse contribute to extremes of food ingestion in anorexia and bulimia nervosa?Biological psychiatry · 2013Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Disturbances in reward processing have been implicated in bulimia nervosa (BN). Abnormalities in processing reward-related stimuli might be linked to dysfunctions of the catecholaminergic neurotransmitter system, but findings have been inconclusive. A powerful way to investigate the relationship between catecholaminergic function and behavior is to examine behavioral changes in response to experimental catecholamine depletion (CD). The purpose of this study was to uncover putative catecholaminergic dysfunction in remitted subjects with BN who performed a reinforcement-learning task after CD. CD was achieved by oral alpha-methyl-para-tyrosine (AMPT) in 19 unmedicated female subjects with remitted BN (rBN) and 28 demographically matched healthy female controls (HC). Sham depletion administered identical capsules containing diphenhydramine. The study design consisted of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover, single-site experimental trial. The main outcome measures were reward learning in a probabilistic reward task analyzed using signal-detection theory. Secondary outcome measures included self-report assessments, including the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire. Relative to healthy controls, rBN subjects were characterized by blunted reward learning in the AMPT--but not in placebo--condition. Highlighting the specificity of these findings, groups did not differ in their ability to perceptually distinguish between stimuli. Increased CD-induced anhedonic (but not eating disorder) symptoms were associated with a reduced response bias toward a more frequently rewarded stimulus. In conclusion, under CD, rBN subjects showed reduced reward learning compared with healthy control subjects. These deficits uncover disturbance of the central reward processing systems in rBN related to altered brain catecholamine levels, which might reflect a trait-like deficit increasing vulnerability to BN.
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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.