ArticleEuropean archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience2020
Is glutamate associated with fear extinction and cognitive behavior therapy outcome in OCD? A pilot study.
Article in European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 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.
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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
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Fear conditioning and extinction in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A systematic review.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- "It Doesn't Matter Where OCD Comes From," or Does It?Current psychiatry reports · 2026Review
- Repeated intranasal esketamine augmentation in treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder with comorbid major depressive disorder: a prospective case series.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- A systematic review of spontaneous recovery in human fear conditioning.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Causally mapping human threat extinction relevant circuits with depolarizing brain stimulation methods.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Investigational and Experimental Drugs to Treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.Journal of experimental pharmacology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) including exposure and response prevention is a well-established treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and is based on the principles of fear extinction. Fear extinction is linked to structural and functional variability in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and has been consistently associated with glutamate neurotransmission. The relationship between vmPFC glutamate and fear extinction and its effects on CBT outcome have not yet been explored in adults with OCD. We assessed glutamate levels in the vmPFC using 3T magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and fear extinction (learning and recall) using skin conductance responses during a 2-day experimental paradigm in OCD patients (n = 17) and in healthy controls (HC; n = 13). Obsessive-compulsive patients (n = 12) then received manualized CBT. Glutamate in the vmPFC was negatively associated with fear extinction recall and positively associated with CBT outcome (with higher glutamate levels predicting a better outcome) in OCD patients. Glutamate levels in the vmPFC in OCD patients were not significantly different from those in HC, and were not associated with OCD severity. Our results suggest that glutamate in the vmPFC is associated with fear extinction recall and CBT outcome in adult OCD patients.
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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.