NCT06412315

7T Amygdala and Citalopram Study

The Effects of Citalopram on the Brain's Response to Faces

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 50 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Oxford · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 40 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The goal of this study is to investigate how a common antidepressant citalopram (which increases the levels of the chemical messenger serotonin), affects how a key area of the brain involved in depression (the amygdala) responds to emotional information. Healthy participants will undergo medical and psychiatric health screening, after which they will be assigned to receive either a single dose of citalopram (20mg) or placebo, and undergo brain scanning (7T fMRI) whilst viewing emotional faces. Since the scan uses high field strength, the investigators will be able to see effects of citalopram on different subfields within the amygdala which will help to understand how citalopram might be working.

Detailed description

Antidepressants typically decrease amygdala response to negative stimuli while enhancing response to positive stimuli, but it is unclear at a mechanistic level how increasing serotonin would have this opposing effect. One hypothesis is that although positive and negative cues activate the same area at a global level, more detailed characterisation may reveal key differences in processing in terms of localisation or response function. Until now, due to methodological restriction, the amygdala has been mostly studied as a single structure. It is however known that it consists of a number of subfields, which are likely to play distinct roles in emotional processing. In this study the investigators will make use of 7T fMRI scanning to study the effects of a single dose (20 mg) of citalopram (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, SSRI) on these subfields during emotional face processing, allowing greater precision to identify underlying neural mechanisms underpinning psychological effects.

Conditions

• Emotional Processing
• Cognition
• Mood Disorders
• Depressive Disorder
• Depression

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DRUG	Citalopram	Participants will receive a single dose (20mg) citalopram. Tablets encapsulated to aid blinding. To take per oral once.
DRUG	Placebo	Participants will receive a single dose of placebo (sucrose). Tablets encapsulated to aid blinding. To take per oral once

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-02-13
• Primary completion: 2026-10-31
• Completion: 2026-10-31
• First posted: 2024-05-14
• Last updated: 2025-02-21

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United Kingdom