DOI: 10.5061/dryad.17296
title: Data from: Dissociable temporal effects of bupropion on behavioural measures of emotional and reward processing in depression

description: Background: Antidepressants remediate negative biases in emotional
 processing early in treatment, prior to mood improvement. However, the
 effects on reward processing potentially relevant to the treatment of
 anhedonia are less clear. Here we investigate the early and sustained
 effects of the dopamine and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor bupropion on
 behavioural measures of emotional and reward processing in currently
 depressed individuals. Methods: 46 currently depressed patients and 42
 healthy controls participated in a repeated measures study, during which
 open-label bupropion was administered to only the patient group over a 6
 week period without a placebo group. All participants completed the
 Emotional Test Battery and a probabilistic instrumental learning task at
 week 0, week 2 and week 6. Results: Currently depressed patients displayed
 negative biases in emotional processing and blunted response bias for
 high-probability wins compared to the healthy controls at baseline.
 Bupropion was found to reduce the negative biases in emotional processing
 early in treatment, including a significant decrease in the percentage
 misclassification of other face emotions as sad and the number of negative
 self-referent words falsely recalled between baseline and week 2.
 Conversely, bupropion was found to initially further reduce the response
 bias for high-probability wins between baseline and week 2. This effect
 reversed with 6 weeks bupropion treatment and reward processing was
 normalised compared to the healthy controls. Conclusions: Early in
 treatment, bupropion acts to reduce negative biases in emotional
 processing but exacerbates impaired reward processing. The beneficial
 actions of bupropion on reward processing then occur later in treatment.
 Such dissociation in the temporal effects of bupropion on emotional and
 reward processing has implications for the treatment of the different
 symptom domains of negative affect and anhedonia in depression.
description: MDD individual
 participant HAM-D scoresMDD individual
 participant HAM-D scores taken at test visit 1 (baseline) and test visit 3
 (final). This data was used to generate Figure 1.Individual participant
 mood scoresIndividual participant
 mood scores. This data was used to generate Table 2.Individual participant
 FERT resultsIndividual participant
 FERT results showing percentage misclassification of other face emotions
 as sad. Shaded cells represent no data available. This data was used to
 generate Figure 2.Individual participant
 ECAT resultsIndividual participant
 ECAT data of % accuracy for positive and negative self-referent words for
 the HC and MDD groups across the 3 visits. Shaded cells represent no data
 available. This data was used to generate Figure 3.Individual participant
 EREC dataIndividual participant
 EREC data showing number of negative and positive self-referent words
 falsely recalled for the HC and MDD groups across the 3 visits. Shaded
 cells represent no data available. This data was used to generate Figure
 4.Individual reward task
 dataIndividual reward task
 data showing % correct & incorrect symbol choices. This data was used
 to generate Figure 5.