The effects of angiotensin-receptor blockade on mood and vigilance behaviour in a gamified foraging task
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Losartan, an angiotensin-receptor blocker, has previously been shown to have anxiolytic effects. Previous studies have suggested losartan may enhance threat processing via reduced attentional avoidance of threat. We investigated this suggestion, using the Gamified Foraging Task, to examine how losartan alters vigilance and avoidance behaviour in response to threats. We hypothesized that losartan would act anxiolytically, increasing vigilant and decreasing avoidant behaviours. As this task has not previously been used in smaller scale studies, we also aimed to characterize the viability of this task for use in smaller samples. 60 healthy participants were randomised to receive a single dose of losartan (50mg) or placebo. 45-minutes after drug administration, participants completed a battery of computerised tasks, including the Gamified Foraging Task. Task behaviours were extracted from raw data and input into a validated regression model from Trier et al. (2023) to compute an anxiety-related compound measure. We regressed this compound measure against group, and additional predictors of no interest, to determine if losartan impacts behavioural markers of anxiety. We additionally replicated the previous study hypotheses testing analyses, investigating how environmental factors impact mood, to compare results and aid in task viability assessments. Pre-drug diastolic blood pressure (BP) predicted behavioural markers of anxiety in linear regression models. We suggest that changes in diastolic BP may underpin this relationship, such that decreases in BP may decrease anxiety-related behaviours. In post-hoc analysis, we found group also predicted behavioural measures of anxiety. We therefore suggest that losartan may act anxiolytically to reduce threat-related worries and increase vigilant checking behaviours. This supports suggestions that losartan may be useful as an adjunct to exposure therapy, acting synergistically to improve clinical outcomes. Additionally, we replicated the finding that task environment impacts mood ratings and suggest this task may therefore be useful for investigating mood in future studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".