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Clinical depression is a common, debilitating and heterogenous disorder. Existing treatments for depression are inadequate for a significant minority of patients and new approaches are urgently needed. A wealth of evidence implicates the serotonin 1A (5-HT1A) receptor in the pathophysiology of depression. Stimulation of the 5-HT1A receptor is an existing therapeutic target for treating depression and anxiety, using drugs such as buspirone and tandospirone. However, activation of 5-HT1A raphe autoreceptors has also been suggested to be responsible for the delay in the therapeutic action of conventional antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). This narrative review provides a brief overview of the 5-HT1A receptor, the evidence implicating it in depression and in the effects of conventional antidepressant treatment. We highlight that pre- and post-synaptic 5-HT1A receptors may have divergent roles in the pathophysiology and treatment of depression. To date, developing this understanding to progress therapeutic discovery has been limited, partly due to a paucity of specific pharmacological probes suitable for use in humans. The development of 5-HT1A 'biased agonism', using compounds such as NLX-101, offers the opportunity to further elucidate the roles of pre- and post-synaptic 5-HT1A receptors. We describe how experimental medicine approaches can be helpful in profiling the effects of 5-HT1A receptor modulation on the different clinical domains of depression, and outline some potential neurocognitive models that could be used to test the effects of 5-HT1A biased agonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Clinical studies suggest that the highly lipophilic, anti-inflammatory molecule, simvastatin, might be an ideal candidate for drug repurposing in the treatment of depression. The neuropsychological effects of simvastatin are not known, but their ascertainment would have significant translational value about simvastatin's influence on mood and cognition. Objectives: We aimed to investigate the effects of simvastatin on a battery of psychological tests and inflammatory markers in healthy volunteers. Methods: Fifty-three healthy subjects were randomly assigned to 7 days of either simvastatin (N = 27) or sucrose-based placebo (N = 26) given in a double-blind fashion. Then, participants were administered questionnaires measuring subjective rates of mood and anxiety, and a battery of tasks assessing emotional processing, reward learning, and verbal memory. Blood samples for C-reactive protein were also collected. Results: Compared to placebo, participants on simvastatin showed a higher number of positively valenced intrusions in the emotional recall task (F1,51 = 4.99, p = 0.03), but also an increase in anxiety scores (F1,51 = 5.37, p = 0.02). An exploratory analysis of the females' subgroup (N = 27) showed lower number of misclassifications as sad facial expression in the simvastatin arm (F1,25 = 6.60, p = 0.02). No further statistically significant changes could be observed on any of the other outcomes measured. Conclusions: We found limited evidence that 7-day simvastatin use in healthy volunteer induces a positive emotional bias while also being associated with an increase in anxiety, potentially reflecting the early effects of antidepressants in clinical practice. Such effect might be more evident in female subjects. Different drug dosages, treatment lengths, and sample selection need consideration in further experimental medicine and clinical studies. Trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT04652089. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale: Bright light treatment (BLT) is an efficacious antidepressant intervention, but its mechanism of action is not well understood. Antidepressant drugs acutely affect how emotional information is processed, pushing the brain to prioritise positive relative to negative input. Whether BLT could have a similar effect is not known to date. Objective: To test whether BLT acutely influences emotional information processing similar to antidepressant drugs, using an established healthy volunteer assay. Methods: Following a double-blind, parallel-group design, 49 healthy volunteers (18–65 years, 26 females) were randomly allocated to 60-min BLT (≥ 10,000 lux) or sham-placebo treatment early in the morning in autumn/winter. Immediately after treatment, emotional information processing was assessed using the Oxford Emotional Test Battery, a validated set of behavioural tasks tapping into emotional information processing in different cognitive domains. Participants also completed questionnaires before and after treatment to assess changes in subjective state. Results: The BLT group did not show significantly more positively biased emotional information processing compared to the placebo group (p > 0.05 for all measures). After adjustment for pre-treatment scores, there were also no significant post-treatment differences between groups in subjective state (p > 0.05 for all measures). Conclusions: BLT did not show immediate effects on emotional information processing in an established healthy volunteer assay. Thus, BLT might exert its clinical effects through a different (cognitive) mechanism than other antidepressant interventions. Future studies should corroborate this finding including clinical populations and more intensive treatment regimes, and control for potential chronobiological effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]