ArticleeLife2016
A specific role for serotonin in overcoming effort cost.
Article in eLife, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05866575 (Prediction of the Therapeutic Response in Depression Based on an Early Neuro-computational Modeling Assessment of Motivation), which is not on this map. Cited by 48 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.
Prediction of the Therapeutic Response in Depression Based on an Early Neuro-computational Modeling Assessment of Motivation
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 121 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
- 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
- Behavioral intervention with task repetition compared to pharmacological intervention with SSRI for enhancement of cognitive control in emotional and non-emotional settings.Psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Computational Mechanisms of Effort and Reward Decisions in Patients With Depression and Their Association With Relapse After Antidepressant Discontinuation.JAMA psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Neurochemical drivers of effort: The roles of dopamine and beyond in physical and cognitive exertion.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Examining effects of effort and reward magnitude on effort-cost decision-making in people with major depressive disorder.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Shared and distinct features of common effort-based decision-making paradigms and their relation to brain structure and neuropsychiatric conditions: An integrated narrative review.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Antidepressant drugs have pharmacological- and time-dependent effects on reinforcement learning in healthy volunteers: An 8 weeks randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Impaired effort allocation in schizophrenia.Schizophrenia research. Cognition · 2025Article
- Impaired reward sensitivity in Parkinson's depression is unresponsive to dopamine treatment.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2025Article
- Clustering and drivers of symptoms observed at week six after antidepressant treatment in depressed outpatients.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Article
- Efficacy of Nigella sativa seed oil against psychophysical stress induced irritable bowel syndrome and anxiety-like symptoms in Wistar rats.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Dopamine and acetylcholine have distinct roles in delay- and effort-based decision-making in humans.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Optogenetic activation of dorsal raphe serotonin neurons induces brain-wide activation.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A primer on the use of computational modelling to investigate affective states, affective disorders and animal welfare in non-human animals.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Reduced serotonergic transmission alters sensitivity to cost and reward via 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors in monkeys.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Estrogen deficiency reduces maximal running capacity and affects serotonin levels differently in the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens in response to acute exercise.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Uncovering the Neural Correlates of Anhedonia Subtypes in Major Depressive Disorder: Implications for Intervention Strategies.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- Amphetamines Improve the Motivation to Invest Effort in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Stress to inflammation and anhedonia: Mechanistic insights from preclinical and clinical models.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Serotonin is implicated in many aspects of behavioral regulation. Theoretical attempts to unify the multiple roles assigned to serotonin proposed that it regulates the impact of costs, such as delay or punishment, on action selection. Here, we show that serotonin also regulates other types of action costs such as effort. We compared behavioral performance in 58 healthy humans treated during 8 weeks with either placebo or the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor escitalopram. The task involved trading handgrip force production against monetary benefits. Participants in the escitalopram group produced more effort and thereby achieved a higher payoff. Crucially, our computational analysis showed that this effect was underpinned by a specific reduction of effort cost, and not by any change in the weight of monetary incentives. This specific computational effect sheds new light on the physiological role of serotonin in behavioral regulation and on the clinical effect of drugs for depression. CLINICAL
trial registrationISRCTN75872983.
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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.