The Effect of Acute Minocycline Administration on Emotional Processing and Cognition in Healthy Volunteers

There is growing interest in the possibility of producing more effective antidepressant treatments that target a wider range of pathways involved in depression, including anti-inflammatory and anti-glutamatergic systems. Minocycline is a novel pharmacological agent; in addition to its antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties, it also acts in the brain as an anti-glutamatergic and anti-oxidant agent. Since both excessive glutamate and oxidative stress are implicated in major depression, and appear to be connected to pro-inflammatory activity, this drug offers a unique tool with which the investigators can measure the effects of targeting these pathways on emotional processing. Participants will receive a single dose of either the drug (200 mg minocycline) or placebo, and will then undergo a well-validated computerised battery of emotional processing tasks that have previously been shown to be sensitive to standard antidepressant drugs. Tasks include presentation of positive and negative emotional words or pictures, to which participants' responses are measured. These tasks have been widely used previously without any adverse effects.