Clinical evidence shows that antidepressants, such as Fluoxetine, have negative impacts on sensory (particularly auditory) processing. How antidepressants affect sensory processing and what can be done to mitigate the effects of these drugs, however, remains largely unknown. A recent study by Professor Xiaoming Zhou and his team showed that Fluoxetine significantly impaired the behavioral and cortical processing of sound in adult rats. The effect was accompanied by drug-induced changes in introcortical inhibition. Fluoxetine also altered the plasticity state of the auditory system. In response to this discovery, Professor Zhou and his team further found that auditory processing that was previously degraded by Fluoxetine can be renormalized by passively exposing the drug-treated rats to enriched sound. These findings have significant implications for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying antidepressants effects on hearing and indicate that combining antidepressant treatment with enriched sensory experiences may lead to more favorable clinical outcomes. This research is published in Journal of Neuroscience.
Journal Reference
Cheng, Y., Chen, R., Su, B., Zhang, G., Sun, Y., An, P., Fang, Y., Zhang, Y., Shang, Y., de Villers-Sidani, É., Wang, Y., Zhou, X. (2023). Pairing with enriched sound exposure restores auditory processing degraded by an antidepressant. Journal of Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2027-22.2023.