A Phase 1/2 interventional study of Citalopram 20mg and Placebo in Anhedonia, sponsored by University of Oxford. Status unknown at 1 site in United Kingdom. Open to participants aged 18 Years to 65 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2023-08-30.
Sponsored by University of Oxford · Phase 1/2, Interventional, and Treatment
The goal of this experimental medicine study is to examine the effect of increasing serotonin on reward processing in healthy volunteers. The main questions it aims to answer are:
Participants will be:
given a 7-day course of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, citalopram. undergo behavioural testing complete a reward learning task whilst undergoing fMRI
Researchers will compare results against a placebo group.
122 studies on the registry are indexed under Anhedonia; 45 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 40 is below the median of 70 across 102 interventional studies indexed under Anhedonia.
Browse Anhedonia studies →University of Oxford is the lead sponsor of 812 studies on the registry; 119 are open to participants now.
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Exclusion Criteria:
Citalopram 20mg p.o. once daily for 7-9 days
Drug: Citalopram 20mg
Lactose p.o. once daily for 7-9 days
Drug: Placebo
Citalopram 20mg tablets, encapsulated to aid blinding. To take per oral once daily for 7-9 days
Lactose monohydrate tablets encapsulated to aid blinding. To take per oral once daily for 7-9 days
Reward & aversive learning: behavioural correlates
Optimal choice learning rate of conditioned stimuli to win and loss outcomes. During an instrumental reinforcement learning task participant will complete trials with a pair of symbols (the valence will either be loss or win, which is implicit). One symbol will be high chance of that outcome (either win or loss depending on the valence of the pair) and the other low chance of the outcome. In the win pair the optimal choice is the high chance symbol (i.e. to win), in the loss pair the optimal choice is the low chance option (i.e. avoid loss). In each allocation group the proportion of participants making an optimal choice will be calculated on a trial-by-trial basis. This provide the learning rate outcome.
Time frame: Day 7-9 of treatment
Reward & aversive learning: neural correlates
Activity of a network of brain regions associated with reward learning (during anticipation and outcome), in response to a positive \& negative outcomes in reward learning task. This will be the difference in BOLD activation in certain brain regions (pertinent to reward processing) between allocation groups during the anticipation stage and the outcome stage of the instrumental learning task.
Time frame: Day 7-9 of treatment
Resting state
Resting state fMRI activation
Time frame: Day 7-9 of treatment
Subjective rating of primary reward
Subjective rating of four tastes (sweet, salt, sour \& bitter) in terms of intensity, anticipation of pleasurableness and actual pleasurableness.
Time frame: Day 0 and day 7-9 of treatment
Reward & aversive learning: behavioural volatile reward learning task: total money won
Amount of money won/lost \& total amount of money received.
Time frame: day 7-9 of treatment
Motivational reward task
Participants are asked to accept or decline hypothetical offers made of various combinations of reward and physical effort (grip strength). For a limited number of offers participants are asked to actually expend effort for offers too. The investigators will examine 1. Proportion of offer acceptance for various levels of reward and effort 2. proportion of accepted offers successfully obtained
Time frame: day 7-9 of treatment
Reward & aversive learning: behavioural volatile reward learning task: learning rate
Learning rate of optimal choices changes during the task. Proportion of participants in each allocation arm making an optimal choice on a trial-by-trial basis will provide the learning rate for each group. Provides sensitive measure of reward and aversive learning rates.
Time frame: day 7-9 of treatment
Plan to share: Undecided — Research data will be anonymised and then processed for analysis. Anonymised data will be made available post-publication on Open Science Framework (OSF). defaced neural images will be shared via governed access through Zenodo with data sharing agreements in place
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Started May 2023 (actual). Primary completion is estimated for May 2024, 11 months after the start.
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This study is status unknown, as verified in May 2023. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Studies of the drug tested here: Citalopram