The role of the nucleus accumbens and rostral anterior cingulate cortex in anhedonia: Integration of resting EEG, fMRI, and volumetric techniques
By Jan Wacker, Daniel G. Dillon, Diego A. Pizzagalli. NeuroImage, 2009
396 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Anhedonia, the reduced propensity to experience pleasure, is a promising endophenotype and vulnerability factor for several psychiatric disorders, including depression and schizophrenia. In the present study, we used resting electroencephalograms, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and volumetric analyses to probe putative associations between anhedonia and individual differences in key nodes of the brain’s reward system in a non-clinical sample. We found that anhedonia, but not other symptoms of depression or anxiety, was correlated with reduced nucleus accumbens (NAcc) responses to rewards (gains in a monetary incentive delay task), reduced NAcc volume, and increased resting delta current density (i.e., decreased resting activity) in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), an area previously implicated in positive subjective experience. In addition, NAcc reward responses were inversely associated with rACC resting delta activity, supporting the hypothesis that delta might be lawfully related to activity within the brain’s reward circuit. Taken together, these results help elucidate the neural basis of anhedonia and strengthen the argument for anhedonia as an endophenotype for depression.
Subfields: Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine, Cognitive Neuroscience
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ec74dcecb2c9e8eb53a47ca56c6a8fdb872c2961
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
- Greg Hajcak
- Dan Foti
- Michael T. Treadway
- David H. Zald
- Eddie Harmon-Jones
- C. Carver
- B. de Gelder
- Diego A. Pizzagalli
Citations in the corpus
- Linking Molecules to Mood: New Insight Into the Biology of Depression (2010, neutral): “are associated with reduced nucleus accumbens volume (95) as well as hypoactivation during simple tasks of incentive reward (96,97).”
- Ventral striatal and medial prefrontal BOLD activation is correlated with reward-related electrocortical activity: A combined ERP and fMRI study (2011, background): “In particular, a blunted VS response in depression is specifically correlated with anhedonia (Keedwell et al., 2005; Wacker et al., 2009) and deep brain stimulation of the VS attenuates anhedonic symptoms (Schlaepfer et al.”
- Reconsidering Anhedonia in Depression: Lessons from Translational Neuroscience (2010, background): “Functional MRI studies have revealed diminished responses o receipt of reward (McCabe et al., 2009a,b; Pizzagalli et al., 2009; moski et al., 2009; Wacker et al., 2009), to anticipation of reward Forbes et al.”