As an at-risk personality trait, alexithymia includes difficulties attending to, distinguishing among, and verbalizing emotions. While these deficits are typically described as extending to both positive and negative emotions, some research suggests a valence-specific pattern such that alexithymic individuals are under-responsive to appetitive stimuli in particular. As this pattern suggests anh...

BACKGROUND Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous disease. More homogeneous psycho(patho)logical dimensions would facilitate MDD research as well as clinical practice. The first aim of this study was to find potential dimensions within a broad psychopathological assessment in depressed patients. Second, we aimed at examining how these dimensions predicted course in MDD. METHODS Te...

One of the core symptoms of major depression in human is anhedonia. For that reason, one of the main requirements towards experimental depression models is that they be able to demonstrate anhedonia in animals, that have been exposed to stressful events, and other behavioral changes attributable to a depression-like state. However, the results presented in the literature are contradictory: swee...

BACKGROUND Of the putative psychopathological endophenotypes in major depressive disorder (MDD), the anhedonic subtype is particularly well supported. Anhedonia is generally assumed to reflect aberrant motivation and reward responsivity. However, research has been limited by a lack of objective measures of reward motivation. We present the Effort-Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT or "effort")...

Anhedonia is defined as a diminished ability to obtain pleasure from otherwise positive stimuli. Anxiety and mood disorders have been previously associated with dysregulation of the reward system, with anhedonia as a core element of major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether stress-induced anhedonia could be prevented by treatments with escitalopram...

Reduced capacity to experience pleasure, also known as anhedonia, is a key feature of the depressive state and is associated with poor disease prognosis and treatment outcome. Various behavioral readouts (e.g., reduced sucrose intake) have been employed in animal models of depression as a measure of anhedonia. However, several aspects of anhedonia are poorly represented within the repertoire of...

OBJECTIVE Deficits in reward processing are established in mood and substance use disorders and are known risk factors for these disorders. Volume reductions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the striatum, regions that subserve neural response to reward, have been shown to be related to anhedonia in depressive and substance use disorders. The authors sought to investigate how structural maturatio...

BACKGROUND Recent literature has distinguished the negative symptoms associated with a diminished capacity to experience (apathy, anhedonia) from symptoms associated with a limited capacity for expression (emotional blunting, alogia). The apathy-anhedonia syndrome tends to be associated with a poorer prognosis than the symptoms related to diminished expression. The efficacy of drug-based treatm...

Background It is increasingly recognised that the study of responses to positive emotions significantly contributes our understanding psychopathology. Notably, are not necessarily experienced as pleasurable. Instead, some believe experiencing happiness may have negative consequences, referred fear (FOH), or they experience a losing ...