SynthesisPsychiatry research. Neuroimaging2020
The neurobiological reward system in Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD): A systematic review.
Synthesis in Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 29 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.
Naltrexone Treatment for Prolonged Grief Disorder: A Pilot Study
Naltrexone Treatment for Prolonged Grief Disorder: A Proof of Concept Study
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Grief-Related Psychopathology from Complicated Grief to DSM-5-TR Prolonged Grief Disorder: A Systematic Review of Biochemical Findings.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Dwelling in prolonged grief: Resting state functional connectivity during oxytocin and placebo administration.Human brain mapping · 2023Trial
- Desire thinking as a cognitive mechanism of yearning after bereavement.Journal of affective disorders · 2026Article
- Prolonged grief disorder in later life: advancing our understanding of biopsychosocial mechanisms to guide future personalized interventions.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder among older adults: mapping physicians' knowledge and practice, and evaluating the effectiveness of a brief targeted training program.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Non-death loss and GenAI: ethical reflections on griefbots of the living.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Article
- Development and validation of a new yearning induction task: a cross-cultural study of Chinese and Swiss bereaved.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2025Article
- Grief, bereavement and prolonged grief disorder: scoping and mapping the evidence.BJPsych open · 2025Review
- Motivational and Self-Regulatory Factors Associated With Yearning and Prolonged Grief Symptoms.The Journal of nervous and mental disease · 2025Article
- Prolonged grief symptoms and lingering attachment predict approach behavior toward the deceased.Journal of traumatic stress · 2025Article
- The Iatrogenic Consequences of Medicalising Grief: Resetting the Research Agenda.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- When perception meets grief: how the brain reconstructs person networks in response to absence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Toward Centrality Evaluation of Yearning Symptoms for Prolonged Grief Disorder: A Cross-Cultural Approach.Psychopathology · 2025Article
- The impact of psychosocial adversity on brain and behaviour: an overview of existing knowledge and directions for future research.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Review
- Prolonged Grief Disorder: Addressing Misconceptions With Evidence.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2024Article
- Prairie voles as a model for adaptive reward remodeling following loss of a bonded partner.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2024Review
- The nature of grief: implications for the neurobiology of emotion.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Article
- Grief is a family affair: examining longitudinal associations between prolonged grief in parents and their adult children using four-wave cross-lagged panel models.Psychological medicine · 2023Article
- Exploring the role of empathy in prolonged grief reactions to bereavement.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Co-occurrence of approach and avoidance in prolonged grief: a latent class analysis.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) is a debilitating condition affecting between 7% and 10% of bereaved individuals. Past imaging and psychological studies have proposed links between PGD's characteristic symptoms - in particular, profound yearning - and the neural reward system. We conducted a systematic review to investigate this connection. On December 19, 2019, we searched six bibliographic databases for data on the neurobiology of grief and disordered grief. We excluded studies of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, animal studies, and reviews. After abstract and full-text screening, twenty-four studies were included in the final review. We found diverse evidence for the activation of several reward-related regions of the brain in PGD. The data reviewed suggest that compared to normative grief, PGD involves a differential pattern of activity in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC); likely differential activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), rostral or subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and basal ganglia overall, including the nucleus accumbens (NAc); and possible differential activity in the insula. It also appears that oxytocin signaling is altered in PGD, though the exact mechanism is unclear. Our findings appear to be consistent with, though not confirmative of, conceptualizing PGD as a disorder of reward, and identify directions for future research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.