Treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and mirtapazine results in differential brain activation by visual erotic stimuli in patients with major depressive disorder.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to identify patterns of brain activation elicited by erotic visual stimuli in patients treated with either Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) or mirtazipine.


METHODS
Nine middle-aged men with major depressive disorder treated with an SSRI and ten middle-aged men with major depressive disorder treated with mirtazapine completed the trial. Ten subjects with no psychiatric illness were included as a control group. We conducted functional brain magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while a film alternatively played erotic and non-erotic contents for 14 minutes and 9 seconds.


RESULTS
The control group showed activation in the occipitotemporal area, anterior cingulate gyrus, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and caudate nucleus. For subjects treated with SSRIs, the intensity of activity in these regions was much lower compared to the control group. Intensity of activation in the group treated with mirtazapine was less than the control group but grea-ter than those treated with SSRIs. Using subtraction analysis, the SSRI group showed significantly lower activation than the mirtazapine group in the anterior cingulate gyrus and the caudate nucleus.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study suggests that the different rates of sexual side effects between the patients in the SSRI-treated group and the mirtazapine-treated group may be due to different effects on brain activation.
Kim
Won
W
Department of Psychiatry and Stress Research Institute, College of Medicine, Inje University, Seoul, Korea.
Jin
Bo-Ra
BR
Yang
Wan-Seok
WS
Lee
Kyuong-Uk
KU
Juh
Ra-Hyung
RH
Ahn
Kook-Jin
KJ
Chung
Yong-An
YA
Chae
Jeong-Ho
JH