Association Between Brain Serotonin 4 Receptor Binding and Reactivity to Emotional Faces in Depressed and Healthy Individuals

Brain serotonergic (5-HT) signaling is posited to modulate neural responses to emotional stimuli. Dysfunction in 5-HT signaling is implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD), a disorder associated with significant disturbances in emotion processing. In MDD, recent evidence points to altered 5-HT receptor (5-HTR) levels, a promising target for antidepressant treatment. However, how these alterations influence neural processing of emotions in MDD remains poorly understood. This is the first study to examine the association between 5-HTR binding and neural responses to emotions in patients with MDD and healthy controls. The study included one hundred and thirty-eight participants, comprising 88 outpatients with MDD from the NeuroPharm clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02869035) and 50 healthy controls. Participants underwent an [C]SB207145 positron emission tomography (PET) scan to quantify 5-HTR binding (BP) and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan during which they performed an emotional face matching task. We examined the association between regional 5-HTR binding and corticolimbic responses to emotional faces using a linear latent variable model, including whether this association was moderated by depression status. We observed a positive correlation between 5-HTR BP and the corticolimbic response to emotional faces across participants (r = 0.20, p = 0.03). This association did not differ between groups (parameter estimate difference = 0.002, 95% CI = -0.008: 0.013, p = 0.72). Thus, in the largest PET/fMRI study of associations between serotonergic signaling and brain function, we found a positive association between 5-HTR binding and neural responses to emotions that appear unaltered in MDD. Future clinical trials with novel pharmacological agents targeting 5-HTR are needed to confirm whether they ameliorate emotion processing biases in MDD.