Effects of Acute Tryptophan Depletion on Mood and Facial Emotion Perception Related Brain Activation and Performance in Healthy Women with and without a Family History of Depression

Abstract

The present study examined the effects of acute tryptophan (Trp) depletion (ATD), a well-recognized method to lower central serotonin (5-HT) metabolism, on brain activation during a facial emotion perception task. Brain activation was measured using fMRI, and healthy female volunteers with a positive family history of unipolar depression (FH + ) were compared to healthy female volunteers without such a history (FHÀ). Participants viewed two morphed faces and were instructed to choose between the faces based either on the intensity of the emotional expression (direct task) or the gender of the face (incidental task). In the FH + group, depletion led to the expected lowering of mood, which partly determined the effect of depletion on performance and brain activation. A stronger mood lowering effect was associated with less accurate performance on faces expressing a negative emotion in the incidental task and a stronger right amygdala response to fearful faces in comparison to happy faces. These results were explained in terms of a mood-induced bias leading to a stronger impact of the expressed negative emotion which subsequently leads to more interference in the incidental task and a stronger amygdala response. It was concluded that the effects of ATD on mood, performance, and brain activation in a facial emotion perception task depend on family history of depression. Performance and brain activation partly depend on the effect of ATD on mood.

The Effects of Psychotherapy on Brain Function — Major Depressive Disorder

“…Furthermore, the activation of the amygdala significantly increased in the normal group with a family history of depression as compared to the other group. [17] The activation of the putamen and insula was significantly lower in the normal group with a family history of depression than in the other group without a family history of depression in a reward expected situation, whereas the activation of the anterior cingulate cortex was significantly higher in the normal group with a family history of depression than in the other group in a punishment expected situation. [18] The aforementioned results are expected to explain some of the hereditary and risky aspects of complex depression.…”

Acute Tryptophan Depletion in Healthy Volunteers Enhances Punishment Prediction but Does not Affect Reward Prediction

“…Second, the (serial) reversal-learning tasks in studies with humans, particularly the one employed here, do not load on inhibitory control as much as do the paradigms used in studies with nonhuman primates, for whom reinforcement is more salient and thus, habit formation more pronounced (Clarke et al, 2007). Finally, neuroimaging studies with human volunteers have shown particularly pronounced effects of ATD on the (dorso)medial PFC during cognitive performance (Cools et al, 2005a;Evers et al, 2005Evers et al, , 2006aTalbot and Cooper, 2006;Van der Veen et al, 2007). Conversely, the disinhibitory effects resulted from selective 5-HT depletion in the OFC (Clarke et al, 2004(Clarke et al, , 2005(Clarke et al, , 2007.…”

“…Studies with healthy human volunteers have demonstrated potentiated processing of punishment-related signals after dietary depletion of the 5-HT precursor tryptophan (TRP; acute tryptophan depletion, ATD), particularly in vulnerable individuals. For example, ATD enhanced the amygdala response to fearful faces (Cools et al, 2005b; Van der Veen et al, 2007), decreased the impact of positively valenced words (Murphy et al, 2002), and increased the impact of negatively valenced emotional words in Stroop-like tasks (Evers et al, 2006a). In addition, ATD potentiated neural activity during negative feedback in a probabilistic reversal-learning task (Evers et al, 2005), which was also sensitive to acute administration of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor citalopram (Chamberlain et al, 2006).…”

Serotonin and Cognitive Flexibility: Neuroimaging Studies into the Effect of Acute Tryptophan Depletion in Healthy Volunteers

“…Previous research showed interactions between the 5-HTTLPR genotype and the effect of ATD on motivational behavior and passive avoidance [45,46]. In addition, our own group confirmed the influence of biological factors on the effect of ATD [89]. The effect of ATD on facial recognition was studied in healthy women with and without a family history of depression.…”