Imperial College London
Alternate

Professor David Nutt DM, FRCP, FRCPsych, FSB, FMedSci

Faculty of Medicine, Department of Brain Sciences

The Edmond J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology
 
 
 
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Contact

 

d.nutt

 
 
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Location

 

Burlington Danes BuildingBurlington DanesHammersmith Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Stroud:2017:10.1007/s00213-017-4754-y,
author = {Stroud, JB and Freeman, TP and Leech, R and Hindocha, C and Lawn, W and Nutt, DJ and Curran, HV and Carhart-Harris, RL},
doi = {10.1007/s00213-017-4754-y},
journal = {Psychopharmacology},
pages = {459--466},
title = {Psilocybin with psychological support improves emotional face recognition in treatment-resistant depression},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-017-4754-y},
volume = {235},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - 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 (p = .035). At baseline, patients were slower at recognising facial emotions compared with controls (p < .001). After psilocybin, this difference was remediated (p = .208). Emotion recognition was faster at follow-up compared with baseline in patients (p = .004, d = .876) but not controls (p = .263, d = .302). In patients, this change was significantly correlated with a reduction in anhedonia over the same time period (r = .640, p = .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.
AU  - Stroud,JB
AU  - Freeman,TP
AU  - Leech,R
AU  - Hindocha,C
AU  - Lawn,W
AU  - Nutt,DJ
AU  - Curran,HV
AU  - Carhart-Harris,RL
DO  - 10.1007/s00213-017-4754-y
EP  - 466
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 0033-3158
SP  - 459
TI  - Psilocybin with psychological support improves emotional face recognition in treatment-resistant depression
T2  - Psychopharmacology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-017-4754-y
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/53273
VL  - 235
ER  -
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