Nearly 40% of patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience a
loss of interest and responsiveness to previously rewarding stimuli and activities,
a condition referred to clinically as anhedonia (see [
1
] for review). Anhedonia is one of the most treatment-resistant aspects of depression
(
2
), and there is good reason to believe that the pathophysiology underlying this symptom
complex may at least partly involve hypoactivity within the mesolimbic dopamine pathway
and related brain structures (
3
). One question that previously has remained relatively unexplored is whether the
pathological reward–related hypoactivity within these brain regions is a state effect
associated with a current depressive episode or is a predisposing and enduring trait
of MDD? In this issue of Biological Psychiatry, McCabe et al. (
4
) present the findings of a study aimed at addressing this important question.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- Reconsidering anhedonia in depression: lessons from translational neuroscience.Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011; 35: 537-555
- The other face of depression, reduced positive affect: the role of catecholamines in causation and cure.J Psychopharmacol (Oxford). 2007; 21: 461-471
- Neurocircuitry of mood disorders.Neuropsychopharmacology. 2010; 35: 192-216
- Neural processing of reward and punishment in young people at increased familial risk of depression.Biol Psychiatry. 2012; 72: 588-594
- Neural representation of reward in recovered depressed patients.Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009; 205: 667-677
- Discovering endophenotypes for major depression.Neuropsychopharmacology. 2004; 29: 1765-1781
- Neural processing of reward and loss in girls at risk for major depression.Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010; 67: 380-387
- The functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex: evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology.Prog Neurobiol. 2004; 72: 341-372
- Dissecting components of reward: ‘liking’, “wanting,” and learning.Curr Opin Pharmacol. 2009; 9: 65-73
- Amygdala and nucleus accumbens activation to emotional facial expressions in children and adolescents at risk for major depression.Am J Psychiatry. 2008; 165: 90-98
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
July 18,
2012
Received:
July 18,
2012
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ScienceDirect
Access this article on ScienceDirectLinked Article
- Neural Processing of Reward and Punishment in Young People at Increased Familial Risk of DepressionBiological PsychiatryVol. 72Issue 7
- PreviewAbnormalities in the neural representation of rewarding and aversive stimuli have been well-described in patients with acute depression, and we previously found abnormal neural responses to rewarding and aversive sight and taste stimuli in recovered depressed patients. The aim of the present study was to determine whether similar abnormalities might be present in young people at increased familial risk of depression but with no personal history of mood disorder.
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