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- Title
Psilocybin with psychological support improves emotional face recognition in treatment-resistant depression.
- Authors
Stroud, J. B.; Freeman, T. P.; Leech, R.; Hindocha, C.; Lawn, W.; Nutt, D.J.; Curran, H.V; Carhart-Harris, R. L.
- Abstract
Rationale: Depressed patients robustly exhibit affective biases in emotional processing which are altered by SSRIs and predict clinical outcome.Objectives: The objective of this study is to investigate whether psilocybin, recently shown to rapidly improve mood in treatment-resistant depression (TRD), alters patients’ emotional processing biases.Methods: Seventeen patients with treatment-resistant depression completed a dynamic emotional face recognition task at baseline and 1 month later after two doses of psilocybin with psychological support. Sixteen controls completed the emotional recognition task over the same time frame but did not receive psilocybin.Results: We found evidence for a group × time interaction on speed of emotion recognition (<italic>p</italic> = .035). At baseline, patients were slower at recognising facial emotions compared with controls (<italic>p</italic> < .001). After psilocybin, this difference was remediated (<italic>p</italic> = .208). Emotion recognition was faster at follow-up compared with baseline in patients (<italic>p =</italic> .004, <italic>d</italic> = .876) but not controls (<italic>p</italic> = .263, <italic>d</italic> = .302). In patients, this change was significantly correlated with a reduction in anhedonia over the same time period (<italic>r</italic> = .640, <italic>p</italic> = .010).Conclusions: Psilocybin with psychological support appears to improve processing of emotional faces in treatment-resistant depression, and this correlates with reduced anhedonia. Placebo-controlled studies are warranted to follow up these preliminary findings.
- Subjects
PSILOCYBIN; MENTAL depression; FACE perception; ANHEDONIA; PLACEBOS
- Publication
Psychopharmacology, 2018, Vol 235, Issue 2, p459
- ISSN
0033-3158
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s00213-017-4754-y