Trial reportJournal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN2021
Cortical inhibition, facilitation and plasticity in late-life depression: effects of venlafaxine pharmacotherapy.
Trial report in Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Characterising resting motor threshold in depressed individuals across life span: a large retrospective study.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Efficacy and Safety of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Treating Late-Life Depression: A Scoping Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
- Antidepressant class and concurrent rTMS outcomes in major depressive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.EClinicalMedicine · 2024Article
- Effect of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex structural measures on neuroplasticity and response to paired-associative stimulation in Alzheimer's dementia.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Modulators of GABANeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Review
- Low-Dose Augmentation With Buprenorphine for Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial With Multimodal Assessment of Target Engagement.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2022Article
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Indices of Cortical Excitability Enhance the Prediction of Response to Pharmacotherapy in Late-Life Depression.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2022Article
- Effects of Antidepressant Medication on Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor Concentration and Neuroplasticity in Depression: A Review of Preclinical and Clinical Studies.Avicenna journal of medical biotechnologyReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundLate-life depression is often associated with non-response or relapse following conventional antidepressant treatment. The pathophysiology of late-life depression likely involves a complex interplay between aging and depression, and may include abnormalities in cortical inhibition and plasticity. However, the extent to which these cortical processes are modifiable by antidepressant pharmacotherapy is unknown.
methodsSixty-eight patients with late-life depression received 12 weeks of treatment with open-label venlafaxine, a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (≤ 300 mg/d). We combined transcranial magnetic stimulation of the left motor cortex with electromyography recordings from the right hand to measure cortical inhibition using contralateral cortical silent period and paired-pulse short-interval intracortical inhibition paradigms; cortical facilitation using a paired-pulse intracortical facilitation paradigm; and short-term cortical plasticity using a paired associative stimulation paradigm. All measures were collected at baseline, 1 week into treatment (
resultsVenlafaxine did not significantly alter cortical inhibition, facilitation or plasticity after 1 or 12 weeks of treatment. Improvements in depressive symptoms during treatment were not associated with changes in cortical physiology. LIMITATIONS: The results presented here are specific to the motor cortex. Future work should investigate whether these findings extend to cortical areas more closely associated with depression, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
conclusionThese findings suggest that antidepressant treatment with venlafaxine does not exert meaningful changes in motor cortical inhibition or plasticity in late-life depression. The absence of changes in motor cortical physiology, alongside improvements in depressive symptoms, suggests that age-related changes may play a role in previously identified abnormalities in motor cortical processes in latelife depression, and that venlafaxine treatment does not target these abnormalities.
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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.