Tryptophan depletion and emotional processing in healthy volunteers at high risk for depression - PubMed (original) (raw)

Randomized Controlled Trial

Tryptophan depletion and emotional processing in healthy volunteers at high risk for depression

Adriana Feder et al. Biol Psychiatry. 2011.

Abstract

Background: Studies in depressed patients have demonstrated the presence of emotional bias toward negative stimuli, as well as dysregulated brain serotonin function. The present study compared the effects of acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) on both an emotional processing and a planning task in never-depressed healthy volunteers at high and low familial risk for depression.

Methods: Young adults with no personal psychiatric history were stratified into two groups based on family history (n = 25). Participants were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover ATD study and completed the affective go/no-go and Tower of London tasks once during each condition.

Results: There was a significant treatment by valence by group interaction on the affective go/no-go, driven primarily by a greater frequency of inappropriate responses to sad than to happy distracters in the high-risk group during ATD. No group differences were observed on the Tower of London.

Conclusions: Asymptomatic individuals at high familial risk for depression showed abnormalities in emotional processing while undergoing experimentally induced tryptophan depletion. These findings support emotional processing disturbances as potential trait-level abnormalities associated with the risk of mood disorder.

Copyright © 2011 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Conflict of interest statement

Dr. Charney reported no other biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest. Ms. Skipper, Dr. Blair, Ms. Buchholz, Dr. Schwarz, Dr. Doucette, Ms. Alonso, and Ms. Collins reported no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Performance on the affective go/no-go task. Figure 1 illustrates a significant treatment by valence by group interaction in distracter error rates on the affective go/no-go task [F(1,23) = 5.00, p = .035]. During acute tryptophan depletion, the high-risk group made more inappropriate responses to sad distracters during happy target blocks than to happy distracters during sad target blocks, a difference that approached significance [t(12) = 1.93, p = .08]. In the low-risk group, responses to distracters during acute tryptophan depletion did not differ significantly by valence [t(11) = 1.00, p = .34]. There were no significant findings during the placebo condition. Each diamond or triangle represents an individual participant. ATD, acute tryptophan depletion.

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