Smith Alexander L W, Hamilton Sorcha, Murphy Susannah E, Cowen Philip J, Harmer Catherine J
Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX3 7JX, UK.
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2025 Mar 14. doi: 10.1007/s00213-025-06770-6.
The 5-HT receptor is expressed widely across the brain and is implicated in the mechanism of action of several therapeutics for mood disorders. However, there is limited and contradictory evidence about the role of this receptor in emotional processing and cognition.
The current study tested the acute effects of a single dose of the 5-HT agonist buspirone (20 mg), on a range of emotional processing (Emotional Test Battery) and cognitive (Auditory Verbal Learning Task (AVLT) and N-back) tasks in healthy, male and female volunteers (N = 62). The study was a randomised, double-blind, placebo controlled, parallel group design.
Buspirone reduced accuracy for detection of facial expressions of disgust and increased misclassification of negative facial emotions. It had no significant effects on categorisation or recall of emotionally-valanced words. Buspirone also reduced recall accuracy in the AVLT but had no significant effect in the N-back task. Participants receiving buspirone were more likely to experience nausea, light-headedness and sleepiness.
Acute buspirone administration produced a mild impairment in verbal memory and a subtle negative bias in emotional processing in healthy volunteers. These effects are consistent with the mixed effects of buspirone on pre- and post-synaptic 5-HT receptors.
5-羟色胺受体在大脑中广泛表达，并与多种情绪障碍治疗药物的作用机制有关。然而，关于该受体在情绪加工和认知中的作用，证据有限且相互矛盾。
本研究测试了单剂量5-羟色胺激动剂丁螺环酮（20毫克）对健康男性和女性志愿者（N = 62）一系列情绪加工（情绪测试组）和认知（听觉言语学习任务（AVLT）和N-back任务）的急性影响。该研究采用随机、双盲、安慰剂对照、平行组设计。
丁螺环酮降低了对厌恶面部表情的检测准确率，并增加了对负面面部情绪的错误分类。它对情绪性词语的分类或回忆没有显著影响。丁螺环酮还降低了AVLT中的回忆准确率，但对N-back任务没有显著影响。接受丁螺环酮的参与者更容易出现恶心、头晕和嗜睡。
急性给予丁螺环酮会使健康志愿者的言语记忆产生轻度损害，并在情绪加工中产生细微的负性偏差。这些效应与丁螺环酮对突触前和突触后5-羟色胺受体的混合作用一致。
