| Recent studies have suggested an important role for serotonin in performance monitoring. The proposed research aims at a deeper understanding of this role by using unipolar depression as a model. We propose to examine unmedicated severely depressed inpatients and these patients will be screened for a recently found single nucleotide polymorphism that strongly reduces central serotonin production. Performance monitoring will be examined by using performance, psychophysiological and fMRI measures. The proposed research will contribute to our knowledge about the role of serotonin in performance monitoring in unipolar depression and which brain structures are involved in the serotonergically mediated monitoring deficits. |
