Reconsidering Anhedonia in Depression: Lessons from Translational Neuroscience

By Michael T. Treadway, David H. Zald. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2010

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Anhedonia is a core symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD), the neurobiological mechanisms of which remain poorly understood. Despite decades of speculation regarding the role of dopamine (DA) in anhedonic symptoms, empirical evidence has remained elusive, with frequent reports of contradictory findings. In the present review, we argue that this has resulted from an underspecified definition of anhedonia, which has failed to dissociate between consummatory and motivational aspects of reward behavior. Given substantial preclinical evidence that DA is involved primarily in motivational aspects of reward, we suggest that a refined definition of anhedonia that distinguishes between deficits in pleasure and motivation is essential for the purposes of identifying its neurobiological substrates. Moreover, bridging the gap between preclinical and clinical models of anhedonia may require moving away from the conceptualization of anhedonia as a steady-state, mood-like phenomena. Consequently, we introduce the term “decisional anhedonia” to address the influence of anhedonia on reward decision-making. These proposed modifications to the theoretical definition of anhedonia have implications for research, assessment and treatment of MDD.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Pharmacology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d4698f154f057bd914644b6d9936de6ae6be18e9

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Citations in the corpus

Dopamine System Dysregulation in Major Depressive Disorders (2017, background): “…as a loss of the ability to experience pleasure, but encompasses the complex reward-related deficits observed in MDD or other neuropsychiatric disorders, such as disruption of the anticipation, motivation, and decision-making processes involved in obtaining a reward (Treadway and Zald, 2011).”
The mysterious motivational functions of mesolimbic dopamine. (2012, positive): “show that depressed people often have a relatively normal selfrated experience of encounters with pleasurable stimuli and that, over and above any problems with the experience of pleasure, depressed people appear to have impairments in behavioral activation, reward-seeking behavior, and exertion of ”
Pleasure systems in the brain (2015, background): “Closer inspection has suggested that many of these patients may not be anhedonic any more than Parkinson's patients: at least sensory pleasures may persist virtually intact (Barch et al., 2014; Dowd and Barch, 2010; Sienkiewicz-Jarosz et al., 2005; Treadway and Zald, 2011).”
From prediction error to incentive salience: mesolimbic computation of reward motivation (2012, background): “…schizophrenia or drug psychosis, where enhancements of fearful motivation toward some stimuli may transition to enhanced appetitive motivation toward other stimuli, or from appetitive to aversive (Kapur, 2003; van Os & Kapur, 2009; Buckholtz et al., 2010; Dowd & Barch, 2010; Treadway & Zald, 2011).”
Reward processing dysfunction in major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (2015, background): “the sweet taste test), individuals with MDD report normative ratings of hedonic responses [4].”
Great Expectations: Using Whole-Brain Computational Connectomics for Understanding Neuropsychiatric Disorders (2014, background): “The networks underlying anhedonia, the lack of pleasure, are compromised in the diseased brain (Treadway and Zald, 2011) and, specifically, disruptions have been demonstrated to the predictive coding underlying reinforcement learning (Stephan et al., 2006).”
Toward the future of psychiatric diagnosis: the seven pillars of RDoC (2013, background): “For instance, much is now known about circuits for fear and defense [28], for various aspects of appetitive behavior such as learning to predict reward and moving toward reward [29], and cognitive functions such as working memory [30].”
Depression, Stress, and Anhedonia: Toward a Synthesis and Integrated Model (2014, background): “In spite of the traditional conceptualization of anhedonia, evidence for loss of pleasure and reduced affective/behavioral responses to positive cues in depression is mixed (see also Treadway & Zald 2011).”
Effort-Based Decision-Making in Major Depressive Disorder: A Translational Model of Motivational Anhedonia (2012, positive): “…in cost/benefit decisionmaking, such that individuals fail to engage in rewarding behaviors because they either over-estimate the costs of obtaining rewards, under-estimate the anticipated benefits, or simply fail to integrate cost/benefit information in an optimal manner (Treadway & Zald, 2011).”