Trial reportCommunications biology2025
Pharmacological and pupillary evidence for the noradrenergic contribution to reinforcement learning in Parkinson's disease.
Trial report in Communications biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Pupil-Brain System at Rest: Spontaneous Pupil Fluctuations as Markers of Neuromodulatory and Network Dynamics.Psychophysiology · 2026Review
- Short-term heart rate variability is preserved in Parkinson's disease under atomoxetine.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Noradrenergic therapies in neurodegenerative disease: from symptomatic to disease modifying therapy?Brain communications · 2025Review
- Noradrenergic modulation of saccades in Parkinson's disease.Brain communications · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Noradrenaline plays an integral role in learning by optimising behavioural strategies and facilitating choice execution. Testing the noradrenergic framework of learning in the context of human diseases offers a test bed for current normative neuroscience theories and may also indicate therapeutic potential. Parkinson's disease is often considered as a model of dopamine deficits, including dopamine's role in reinforcement learning. However, noradrenergic function is also severely impaired by Parkinson's disease, contributing to cognitive deficits. Using a single dose of the noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine in people with Parkinson's disease (in a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design), we show improvements in learning compared to placebo. Computational cognitive modelling confirmed a substantial shift in the decision noise parameter, indicative of more exploitative choices. This response pattern closely resembled that of age-matched controls and simulations of optimal response strategies. Pupillometry revealed increased baseline pupil diameter under atomoxetine, which correlated with behavioural improvements, and a heightened phasic pupillary response to feedback. Our findings confirm the noradrenergic contribution to reinforcement learning, and in doing so they challenge the simple interpretation of tonic-phasic locus coeruleus firing patterns based on pupillometry. Noradrenergic modulation is a potential treatment strategy for cognitive symptoms in Parkinson's disease and related disorders.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.