C J Harmer

..They also suggest a mechanism of action potentially compatible with cognitive theories of anxiety and depression...

..Such a model could be applied to improve treatment development, stratification and combination approaches for patients with depression and provide a framework for considering and overcoming treatment nonresponse...

..High-density negative ion (HDNI) treatment is an environmental manipulation that has efficacy in randomized clinical trials in seasonal affective disorder (SAD)...

..TRIAL REGISTRATION: The trial is approved by the Local Ethics Committee: H-C-2008-092, Danish Medicines Agency: 2612-4020, EudraCT: 2008-04857-14, Danish Data Agency: 2008-41-2711 and ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT 00916552...

..Greater validation is required to assess whether these effects are an obligatory component of effective treatment of depression and whether use of these models can improve the accuracy of go/no-go decisions in drug development...

..Cognitive theories suggest that biases in information processing lead depressed patients to make unrealistically negative judgments about themselves and the world...

..The study highlights the potential value of volunteer models in drug development for screening and profiling of novel antidepressants...

..The processing of other fear-relevant cues, such as facial expressions, has also been associated with amygdala function, but an effect of serotonin depletion on these processes has not been assessed...

..This effect may represent an early acute effect of SSRIs on social and emotional processing that is relevant to their therapeutic actions...

..However, the improvement in cognitive function often found following successful pharmacological treatment in depression may be confounded by symptom improvement...

..The authors investigated whether this effect is apparent in depressed patients early in treatment, prior to changes in mood and symptoms...

..Such information could establish tyrosine depletion as an effective probe of dopamine function in healthy volunteers and would also have relevance for future therapeutic applications of this manipulation...

..The amygdala has also been associated with the processing of facial expressions of emotion, particularly those of fear and sadness. However, the role of noradrenaline in the latter process is unknown...

..Antidepressants may not directly modulate mood and anxiety but rather allow a different perspective for our ongoing evaluation of our self, the world and the future...

..The neuropharmacological actions of antidepressants are well characterised but our understanding of how these changes translate into improved mood are still emerging...

..We found that TMS over the medial-frontal cortex impairs the processing of angry, but not happy, facial expressions of emotion...

..Our data also suggests that some of the positive biases in emotional processing produced by SSRI treatment might be detectable at the beginning of treatment...

..Human models of emotional processing may provide a useful means of assessing the likely therapeutic potential of new treatments for depression...

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..The aim of the present study was to confirm and extend this finding by studying the effects of a single dose of the selective serotonin and noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitor, duloxetine...

..In rats, amino acid mixtures lacking tyrosine and its precursor phenylalanine decrease the release of dopamine produced by the psychostimulant drug amphetamine. Amphetamine has been proposed as a model for clinical mania...

..Disgust and anger are of particular theoretical and clinical interest. The current study investigated the neural response to facial expressions of anger and disgust in bulimia nervosa (BN)...

..The Stroop interference effect was abolished by TMS over both anterior cingulate sites. These findings support functional neuroimaging research which suggests that cingulate cortex is central to the processes underlying the Stroop task...

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..However, the overall profile of effects is more limited than that which might be expected in response to a conventional antidepressant...

..Such adaptations in the neural processing of emotional information support the hypothesis that antidepressants have early effects on emotional processing in a manner which would be expected to reverse negative biases in depression...

..Different patterns of neural activation between patients and controls may be the result of either habituation to personally relevant negative self beliefs or of emotional blunting in patients...

..The effect of TRP on emotional processing may be relevant to its reported activity in primate studies of social behaviour...

..The anti-obesity drug and cannabinoid type 1 receptor antagonist, rimonabant, is associated with significant rates of depression and anxiety in clinical use...

..Future studies are needed to clarify the neural mechanisms through which these effects on threat processing are mediated...

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..These results suggest that ATD affects the processing of some negative (including ED-relevant) stimuli, and that reduced 5-HT function may be involved in some aspects of psychological vulnerability to EDs...

..Experimental medicine models developed under this premise have the potential to screen for new treatments, to predict individual treatment response and to consider the effects of pharmacological vs psychological treatments...

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..The aim of the present study was to test whether, like monoamine re-uptake inhibitors, mirtazapine would also produce positive biases in emotional processing...

..However, placebo-controlled, within-subject designs are likely to yield a more valid measure of noradrenaline-mediated cortisol release...

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..Future studies are needed to clarify the effect of tryptophan on these measures in men...

..Depression is associated with neural abnormalities in emotional processing...

..Further studies in subjects more vulnerable to stress are needed to assess the potential therapeutic effects of alpha-lactalbumin in clinical populations...

..Administration of a complex tyrosine-free amino acid drink acutely decreases manic symptoms. Although a nutrient-based approach to illness management is attractive, complex amino acid drinks are too unpalatable for repeated administration...

..Waking salivary cortisol may be a more reliable means of assessing the effects of antidepressant treatment on the HPA axis than a standard regime of basal salivary sampling...

..These results highlight a role of the fronto-parietal circuitry in emotional processing and further suggest that negative biases in these neural processes may be involved in risk for depression...

..We previously found that children of parents with depression showed impaired performance on a task of emotional categorisation...

..These results support the hypothesis that antidepressants have early effects on the neural processing of emotional material which may be important in their therapeutic actions...

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..However, it is unknown whether subjects with high neuroticism present with specific biases in emotion regulation associated with reduced HRV...

..However, little is known about whether these difficulties exist pre-morbidly and how they might contribute to risk...

..It has been hypothesized, but not proved, that psychological interventions may alter the function of prefrontal regions supervising the allocation of attentional resources...

..Finally, we suggest a conceptual framework that embraces both pharmacological and psychological approaches and consider the possible implications of this work for future research and treatment development...

..We also measured waking salivary cortisol, as the regulation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is thought to be impaired in depressive disorder...

..The serotonergic system has been implicated in emotional processing in animals and humans. Although the contribution of different receptor subtypes has been hypothesised, there have been few direct tests of this in human subjects...

..The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a single dose of mirtazapine on the neural processing of emotional faces in healthy volunteers...

..Emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety have been associated with hyperactivity of the amygdala, but it is unknown whether antidepressant treatment directly affects amygdala responses to emotionally significant information...

..Healthy volunteer models of emotional processing offer a potential means by which novel drugs can be screened prior to clinical trials. Here, we consider the effect of 7 days of treatment with aprepitant in such a model...

..There are few studies of the effect of SSRIs on neural reward mechanisms in humans...

..However ratings of depression were unaffected, suggesting that disruption of dopaminergic function by this manipulation does not induce a lowering of mood in individuals vulnerable to depression...

..CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that increased recognition of fear is a trait vulnerability marker for depression and that this is normalized following a single dose of citalopram...

..Deficits in sustaining attention may help explain the difficulties in psychological and occupational functioning in bipolar disorder patients during remission...

..04) independent of changes in hematocrit. This is consistent with upregulation of hippocampal BDNF and neurotrophic actions found in animals and highlights Epo as a promising candidate for treatment of psychiatric disorders...

..Consistent with our previous finding, Epo improved self-reported mood for all 3 days post-administration. Together, these results suggest that characterization of the effects of Epo in a clinically depressed group is warranted...

..However, impairment in emotional categorization could identify a high-risk phenotype and may indicate that people at genetic risk of depression have difficulty in using "mood as information"...

..However, recent reports suggest they may have a much earlier therapeutic onset. A reduction in amygdala responsivity has been implicated in the therapeutic action of SSRIs...

..We hypothesized that people at risk of depression by virtue of a personal history of the illness would show impaired neural responses to a primary rewarding stimulus...

..The present study supports the notion that Epo may have clinical applications in the treatment of psychiatric disorder characterized by cognitive dysfunction...

..Such findings confirm animal studies which support a role for NK1 receptors in emotion. Such an approach may be useful in understanding the effects of novel drug treatments prior to full-scale clinical trials...

..These early effects of antidepressants may be an important component in the therapeutic effects of antidepressant treatment in patients with depression and anxiety...

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..The current study aimed to explore the effects of Epo on neural and behavioral measures of emotional processing relevant for depression and the effects of conventional antidepressant medication...

..This difference in perception may be relevant to the decreased self-esteem and social functioning that have been associated with the euthymic phase of this disorder...

..CONCLUSIONS: A drink containing branch chain amino acids is well tolerated in healthy volunteers and produces effects consistent with lowered dopamine function...

..These abnormalities apparently persist into clinical remission, raising the possibility that they might be trait markers indicating vulnerability to depression...

..However, studies of euthymic bipolar disorder patients may be confounded by the experience of mood episodes and medication. We therefore assessed an adolescent group for vulnerability markers associated with the bipolar phenotype...

..However, it is not clear if these effects occur before, or as a consequence of, changes in clinical state...

..CONCLUSIONS: Abnormalities in waking cortisol are associated with neuroticism in a way similar to those seen in major depression. Elevated waking cortisol may represent a vulnerability marker for mood disorder...

..Our results show that reboxetine modulates the neural substrates of emotional processing, highlighting a mechanism by which drug treatment could normalise negative bias in depression and anxiety...

..The findings provide further support for a critical role of serotonin in declarative episodic memory...

..Although negatively biased cognitions are well documented in depressed patients and to some extent in recovered patients, it remains unclear whether these abnormalities are present before the first depressive episode...

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