An unwanted side effect of SSRIs, especially — though not only — in people taking them for a long time, is a diminished emotional response to both unpleasant and pleasurable events, referred to as “
Research has shown that about
The exact mechanism by which SSRIs may provoke emotional blunting is not known. To uncover this mechanism, researchers need to understand the effects of SSRIs on cognition, or mental processes.
Now, a team of researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen conducted a study among healthy volunteers to investigate the cognitive effects of the SSRI escitalopram — sold under the trade name Lexapro — over several weeks.
The results of this study appear in the journal
Prof. Philip Cowen, professor of psychopharmacology at the University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry, in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study, told Medical News Today:
“This was a well-conducted study carried out by a distinguished group of investigators. Learning more about the neuropsychological effects of widely used drugs, like SSRIs, is an important goal. The authors carried out a wide range of neuropsychological [tests] that included, reward learning, emotional processing, moral reasoning and tests of learning and memory. The sample size [66 participants] was good.”
Since
This study was performed with healthy volunteers, “so the effect of the drug is not confounded by any history of depression,” Dr. Leigh Gibson, reader in…
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