TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wichers, Robert H.
A1  - Findon, James
A1  - Jelsma, Auke
A1  - Giampietro, Vincent
A1  - Stoencheva, Vladimira
A1  - Robertson, Dene M.
A1  - Murphy, Clodagh M.
A1  - McAlonan, Grainne
A1  - Ecker, Christine
A1  - Rubia, Katya
A1  - Murphy, Declan G. M.
A1  - Daly, Eileen
T1  - Modulation of brain activation during executive functioning in autism with citalopram
T2  - Translational Psychiatry
N2  - Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are frequently prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). However, there is limited evidence to support this practice. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the impact of SSRIs on brain function abnormalities in ASD. It has been suggested that some core symptoms in ASD are underpinned by deficits in executive functioning (EF). Hence, we investigated the role of the SSRI citalopram on EF networks in 19 right-handed adult males with ASD and 19 controls who did not differ in gender, age, IQ or handedness. We performed pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activity during two EF tasks (of response inhibition and sustained attention) after an acute dose of 20 mg citalopram or placebo using a randomised, double-blind, crossover design. Under placebo condition, individuals with ASD had abnormal brain activation in response inhibition regions, including inferior frontal, precentral and postcentral cortices and cerebellum. During sustained attention, individuals with ASD had abnormal brain activation in middle temporal cortex and (pre)cuneus. After citalopram administration, abnormal brain activation in inferior frontal cortex was ‘normalised’ and most of the other brain functional differences were ‘abolished’. Also, within ASD, the degree of responsivity in inferior frontal and postcentral cortices to SSRI challenge was related to plasma serotonin levels. These findings suggest that citalopram can ‘normalise’ atypical brain activation during EF in ASD. Future trials should investigate whether this shift in the biology of ASD is maintained after prolonged citalopram treatment, and if peripheral measures of serotonin predict treatment response.
KW  - Molecular neuroscience
KW  - Predictive markers
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/53329
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-533295
SN  - 2158-3188
N1  - Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
VL  - 9
IS  - 1, Art. 286
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  -