{"id":156022,"date":"2023-01-23T01:24:13","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T07:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/scientists-explain-emotional-blunting-caused-by-common-antidepressants"},"modified":"2023-01-23T01:24:13","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T07:24:13","slug":"scientists-explain-emotional-blunting-caused-by-common-antidepressants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/scientists-explain-emotional-blunting-caused-by-common-antidepressants","title":{"rendered":"Scientists explain emotional \u2018blunting\u2019 caused by common antidepressants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-explain-emotional-blunting-caused-by-common-antidepressants2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have worked out why common anti-depressants cause around half of users to feel emotionally \u201cblunted.\u201d In a study published today in <i>Neuropsychopharmacology<\/i>, they show that the drugs affect reinforcement learning, an important behavioral process that allows people to learn from their environment.<\/p>\n<p>According to the NHS, more than 8.3 million patients in England received an <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/antidepressant+drug\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">antidepressant drug<\/a> in 2021\/22. A widely used class of antidepressants, particularly for persistent or severe cases, is <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/selective+serotonin+reuptake+inhibitors\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors<\/a> (SSRIs). These drugs target serotonin, a chemical that carries messages between <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/nerve+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">nerve cells<\/a> in the brain and has been dubbed the \u201cpleasure chemical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the widely reported side effects of SSRIs is \u201cblunting,\u201d where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to. Between 40% and 60% of patients taking SSRIs are believed to experience this side effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have worked out why common anti-depressants cause around half of users to feel emotionally \u201cblunted.\u201d In a study published today in Neuropsychopharmacology, they show that the drugs affect reinforcement learning, an important behavioral process that allows people to learn from their environment. According to the NHS, more than 8.3 million patients in England received [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}