TY - JOUR

T1 - Brain serotonin transporter is associated with cognitive-affective biases in healthy individuals

AU - Armand, Sophia

AU - Ozenne, Brice

AU - Svart, Nanna

AU - Frokjaer, Vibe G.

AU - Knudsen, Gitte M.

AU - Fisher, Patrick M.

AU - Stenbæk, Dea S.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Cognitive affective biases describe the tendency to process negative information or positive information over the other. These biases can be modulated by changing extracellular serotonin (5-HT) levels in the brain, for example, by pharmacologically blocking and downregulating the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT), which remediates negative affective bias. This suggests that higher levels of 5-HTT are linked to a priority of negative information over positive, but this link remains to be tested in vivo in healthy individuals. We, therefore, evaluated the association between 5-HTT levels, as measured with [11C]DASB positron emission tomography (PET), and affective biases, hypothesising that higher 5-HTT levels are associated with a more negative bias. We included 98 healthy individuals with measures of [11C]DASB binding potential (BPND) and affective biases using The Emotional Faces Identification Task by subtracting the per cent hit rate for happy from that of sad faces (EFITAB). We evaluated the association between [11C]DASB BPND and EFITAB in a linear latent variable model, with the latent variable (5-HTTLV) modelled from [11C]DASB BPND in the fronto-striatal and fronto-limbic networks implicated in affective cognition. We observed an inverse association between 5-HTTLV and EFITAB (β = −8% EFITAB per unit 5-HTTLV, CI = −14% to −3%, p =.002). These findings show that higher 5-HTT levels are linked to a more negative bias in healthy individuals. High 5-HTT supposedly leads to high clearance of 5-HT, and thus, a negative bias could result from low extracellular 5-HT. Future studies must reveal if a similar inverse association exists in individuals with affective disorders.

AB - Cognitive affective biases describe the tendency to process negative information or positive information over the other. These biases can be modulated by changing extracellular serotonin (5-HT) levels in the brain, for example, by pharmacologically blocking and downregulating the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT), which remediates negative affective bias. This suggests that higher levels of 5-HTT are linked to a priority of negative information over positive, but this link remains to be tested in vivo in healthy individuals. We, therefore, evaluated the association between 5-HTT levels, as measured with [11C]DASB positron emission tomography (PET), and affective biases, hypothesising that higher 5-HTT levels are associated with a more negative bias. We included 98 healthy individuals with measures of [11C]DASB binding potential (BPND) and affective biases using The Emotional Faces Identification Task by subtracting the per cent hit rate for happy from that of sad faces (EFITAB). We evaluated the association between [11C]DASB BPND and EFITAB in a linear latent variable model, with the latent variable (5-HTTLV) modelled from [11C]DASB BPND in the fronto-striatal and fronto-limbic networks implicated in affective cognition. We observed an inverse association between 5-HTTLV and EFITAB (β = −8% EFITAB per unit 5-HTTLV, CI = −14% to −3%, p =.002). These findings show that higher 5-HTT levels are linked to a more negative bias in healthy individuals. High 5-HTT supposedly leads to high clearance of 5-HT, and thus, a negative bias could result from low extracellular 5-HT. Future studies must reveal if a similar inverse association exists in individuals with affective disorders.

KW - attentional bias

KW - cognition

KW - emotions

KW - healthy volunteers

KW - latent variable modelling

KW - mood disorders

KW - positron emission tomography

KW - serotonin

KW - serotonin transporter

U2 - 10.1002/hbm.25946

DO - 10.1002/hbm.25946

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 35607850

AN - SCOPUS:85130452053

VL - 43

SP - 4174

EP - 4184

JO - Human Brain Mapping

JF - Human Brain Mapping

SN - 1065-9471

IS - 13

ER -