Abstract
Loss of pleasure (clinically referred to as anhedonia), impairments in other reward-related
processes such as reward learning, motivation, and reward valuation, and blunted affect
characterize several mood and other psychiatric disorders. Despite the availability
of many therapeutic options for these disorders, reward-related impairments remain
challenging to treat and often persist despite alleviation of other symptoms. Lack
of animal models of reward-related impairments and affect that have high construct
and predictive validity is a key obstacle to developing novel treatments. This review
highlights 1) guidelines to consider when developing translatable animal models; and
2) recent efforts to develop new reward-related assessments in humans and nonhuman
animals that have been translated or back-translated from one species to another.
The procedures described in this review are used to assess aspects of reward learning,
motivated behavior, reward valuation, and affect. In several cases, researchers have
attempted to implement task parameters that are as identical as possible to the parallel
parameters used in existing cross-species tasks, with the goal of improving the translation
of preclinical drug discovery findings to the clinic. In this regard, Dr. Athina Markou,
who worked tirelessly throughout her career to understand and treat reward-related
impairments across several psychiatric disorders, had great influence on conceptualizing
the development and use of translational animal models of reward-related processes.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 23, 2018
Accepted:
February 14,
2018
Received in revised form:
January 24,
2018
Received:
November 16,
2017
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© 2018 Society of Biological Psychiatry.
