TITLE:
Discriminating Depression, Physical and Social Anhedonia by Neurotransmitter Related Challenge Tests
AUTHORS:
Petra Netter, Juergen Hennig
KEYWORDS:
Depression, Anhedonia, Challenge Tests, Serotonin, Dopamine, Noradrenaline
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.3,
March
11,
2016
ABSTRACT: The aim of this study was to investigate,
if anhedonia, a salient component of depression, shows similar response
patterns to neurotransmitter challenge tests as depression, and if the two
questionnaire based components Physical (PA) and Social (SA) Anhedonia can be
discriminated by differences in drug related size and time of cortisol
responses elicited by the specific serotonin (5- HT) and noradrenaline (NA)
reuptake inhibitors citalopram and reboxetine and prolactin responses to the
dopamine (DA) agonist bromocriptine orally applied to 36 male volunteers in a
double blind balanced cross-over design. Analyses of variance applied to
placebo corrected hormone responses revealed that low and late DA responses
were characteristics of global Depression and of Physical Anhedonia, and that
low DA responses were associated with high NA responses in PA, and with low
5-HT responses in SA. These patterns were explained by differences in
transmitter production and receptor sensitivities and proved to be suitable to
discriminate PA from SA and from global depression by analysing neurochemical
response patterns rather than single means of variables.