Acute neural effects of the mood stabiliser lamotrigine on emotional processing in healthy volunteers: a randomised control trial.

Lamotrigine is an effective mood stabiliser, largely used for the management and prevention of depression in bipolar disorder. The neuropsychological mechanisms by which lamotrigine acts to relieve symptoms as well as its neural effects on emotional processing remain unclear. The primary objective of this current study was to investigate the impact of an acute dose of lamotrigine on the neural response to a well-characterised fMRI task probing implicit emotional processing relevant to negative bias.

Effect of lithium administration on brain activity under an emotion regulation paradigm in healthy participants: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Rationale: Emotion regulation (ER) difficulties have been previously described in bipolar disorder (BD). Whilst lithium has been shown to be effective in the treatment of BD, the mechanisms underlying lithium's effect on mood stabilisation remain unclear.

Objectives: Unravelling lithium's effect on psychological processes impaired in BD, such as ER, could address this translational gap and inform the development of new treatments.

5-HT Receptor Agonist Effects on Functional Connectivity in the Human Brain: Implications for Procognitive Action.

Background: Cognitive deficits are often comorbid with mood disorders and can cause significant functional impairment even after resolution of the primary mood symptoms. We do not currently have pharmacological treatments that adequately address these deficits. 5-HT receptor agonists show promise as potential procognitive agents in animal and early human translational studies.

The Effect of the 5-HT Agonist, Prucalopride, on a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Faces Task in the Healthy Human Brain.

Depression is a common and often recurrent illness with significant negative impact on a global scale. Current antidepressants are ineffective for up to one third of people with depression, many of whom experience persistent symptomatology. 5-HT receptor agonists show promise in both animal models of depression and cognitive deficit.

Déjà-vu? Neural and behavioural effects of the 5-HT receptor agonist, prucalopride, in a hippocampal-dependent memory task.

Cognitive deficits commonly accompany psychiatric disorders but are often underrecognised, and difficult to treat. The 5-HT receptor is a promising potential treatment target for cognitive impairment because in animal studies 5-HT receptor agonists enhance hippocampal-dependent memory processes. To date, there has been little work translating these effects to humans.

Resting state functional connectivity patterns as biomarkers of treatment response to escitalopram in patients with major depressive disorder.

Rational: With no available response biomarkers, matching an appropriate antidepressant to an individual can be a lengthy process. Improving understanding of processes underlying treatment responsivity in depression is crucial for facilitating work on response biomarkers.

Objectives: To identify differences in patterns of pre-treatment resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) that may underlie response to antidepressant treatment.

An Experimental Medicine Investigation of the Effects of Subacute Pramipexole Treatment on Emotional Information Processing in Healthy Volunteers.

Treatment with the dopamine D2/D3 receptor agonist pramipexole has demonstrated promising clinical effects in patients with depression. However, the mechanisms through which pramipexole might alleviate depressive symptoms are currently not well understood. Conventional antidepressant drugs are thought to work by biasing the processing of emotional information in favour of positive relative to negative appraisal.

Dopaminergic modulation of regional cerebral blood flow: An arterial spin labelling study of genetic and pharmacological manipulation of COMT activity.

Dopamine has direct and complex vasoactive effects on cerebral circulation. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) regulates cortical dopamine, and its activity can be influenced both genetically and pharmacologically. COMT activity influences the functional connectivity of the PFC at rest, as well as its activity during task performance, determined using blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI.

Landmark Agnosia: Evaluating the Definition of Landmark-based Navigation Impairment.

Objective: Landmark agnosia is a rare type of navigation impairment, for which various definitions have been presented. From a clinical as well as theoretical perspective, consensus on the characteristics of landmark agnosia would be valuable. In the current study we review the literature concerning landmark agnosia and present a new case study.