1. ¹Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Verdun, QC, Canada
2. ²Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology & Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

Correspondence: Dr M Lepage, Douglas Hospital Research Centre, Frank B Common (FBC) Pavilion, 6875, LaSalle Blvd, Montreal, QC, Canada H4H 1R3. E-mail: martin.lepage@mcgill.ca

Received 4 December 2006; Revised 21 February 2007; Accepted 29 March 2007; Published online 15 May 2007.

Abstract

Anhedonia, the reduced capacity to gain pleasure from pleasurable experiences, is a key symptom of major depression and schizophrenia. Reduced hedonic capacity can also be measured as an enduring trait in non-clinical subjects. Such altered hedonic capacity is likely the result of a basic neuropsychophysiological dysfunction and a vulnerability marker that potentially precedes and contributes to the liability of developing psychiatric disorders. The characterization of the structural and functional neural correlates of trait anhedonia in non-clinical individuals may provide new insights for the early detection of such psychiatric diseases. Twenty-nine non-clinical subjects were scanned at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Trait anhedonia was measured using the Chapman Revised Physical Anhedonia Scale. Semi-automated and automated structural MRI segmentation techniques were used to explore structural correlates of trait anhedonia. Seventeen of the 29 subjects also underwent a functional imaging task where responses to the viewing of affective stimuli were examined to identify the functional correlates of trait anhedonia. Trait anhedonia was inversely related to anterior caudate volume, but positively related to ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity during the processing of positive information. These findings may reflect a specific kind of vulnerability for the development of psychiatric affective disorders and suggest that trait anhedonia may be linked to a volumetric reduction in the basal ganglia and to a prefrontal functional abnormality during hedonic processing.