Anhedonia is defined as a reduction or loss of the ability to experience pleasure as well as loss of motivation to engage purposeful activities. It is commonly found in schizophrenia, major depressive disorder. Accumulating evidence suggests that anhedonia is not a unitary construct and comprises multidimensional features including hedonic capacity, reinforcement learning as well as cost-benefit calculations. Recent findings also suggest that people with high levels of specific traits such as social anhedonia and subthreshold depression have demonstrated lower motivation towards social rewards at both behavioural and neural levels comparing to people with low levels of specific traits. However, few studies have adopted a multidimensional framework to examine anhedonia in these subclinical people. 

To address this gap of knowledge, Dr. Raymond Chan a from the Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience (NACN) Laboratory, Institute of Psychology and his collaborators have conducted a study to specifically examine multidimensional performances of anhedonia in people with subclinical features. They recruited 35 people with high levels of social anhedonia, 53 people with subsyndromal depression, 20 people with co-occurrence of both traits, and 47 people with low levels of both traits as controls to complete a set of self-report checklists, the Monetary Incentives Delay Task and the Social Incentives Delay Task. Their findings showed that people with high levels of social anhedonia, subthreshold depression and co-occurrence of both traits exhibited lower abstract anticipatory pleasure compared to controls. People with subthreshold depression and co-occurrence both traits also exhibited specific impairments in Social Incentives Delay task, i.e., poorer performances in responding to social rewards. Taken together, these findings suggested that people with high levels of social anhedonia have already exhibited a generalized pleasure deficit, while people with subthreshold depression are exhibited impairment in abstract anticipatory pleasure. People with subthreshold depression also exhibited deficit in approach motivation for social reward, while people with high levels of social anhedonia had intact monetary and social reward motivation. 

These findings characterize the multidimensional features of anhedonia performances of subclinical populations. Dr. Chan’s team is now undertaking a series of studies to further examine multidimensional performances of people with subclinical features at both behavioural and neural levels in order to formulate early identification of at-risk groups and develop corresponding management and intervention to alleviate anhedonia. 

This study was supported by the Scientific Foundation of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Programme, and the Philip K. H. Wong Foundation. 

This study is now published online in Asian Journal of Psychiatry

- Pu, J., Huang, Y. H., Chen, H., Lui, S. S. Y., Wang, Y., Chan, R. C. K. (2024). Differential manifestations of anhedonia in people with social anhedonia and subsyndromal depression. Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 100: 104188.

Related publication

- Chan, R. C. K., Wang, L. L., Lui, S. S. Y. (2022). Theories and models of negative symptoms in schizophrenia and clinical implications. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1, 454–467 

LIU Chen

Institute of Psychology

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Beijing 100101, China.

E-mail: liuc@psych.ac.cn