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Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms

Anhedonia, a central depression symptom, is associated with impairments in reward processing. However, it is not well understood which sub-components of reward processing (anticipation, motivation, consummation, and learning) are impaired in association with anhedonia in depression. In particular, i...

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Autores principales: Frey, Anna-Lena, Kaya, M. Siyabend, Adeniyi, Irina, McCabe, Ciara
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9953984/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36831884
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020341
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author Frey, Anna-Lena
Kaya, M. Siyabend
Adeniyi, Irina
McCabe, Ciara
author_facet Frey, Anna-Lena
Kaya, M. Siyabend
Adeniyi, Irina
McCabe, Ciara
author_sort Frey, Anna-Lena
collection PubMed
description Anhedonia, a central depression symptom, is associated with impairments in reward processing. However, it is not well understood which sub-components of reward processing (anticipation, motivation, consummation, and learning) are impaired in association with anhedonia in depression. In particular, it is unclear how learning about different rewards and the effort needed to obtain them might be associated with anhedonia and depression symptoms. Therefore, we examined learning in young people (N = 132, mean age 20, range 17–25 yrs.) with a range of depression and anhedonia symptoms using a probabilistic instrumental learning task. The task required participants to learn which options to choose to maximize their reward outcomes across three conditions (chocolate taste, puppy images, or money) and to minimize the physical effort required to obtain the rewards. Additionally, we collected questionnaire measures of anticipatory and consummatory anhedonia, as well as subjective reports of “liking”, “wanting” and “willingness to exert effort” for the rewards used in the task. We found that as anticipatory anhedonia increased, subjective liking and wanting of rewards decreased. Moreover, higher anticipatory anhedonia was significantly associated with lower reward learning accuracy, and participants demonstrated significantly higher reward learning than effort learning accuracy. To our knowledge, this is the first study observing an association of anhedonia with reward liking, wanting, and learning when reward and effort learning are measured simultaneously. Our findings suggest an impaired ability to learn from rewarding outcomes could contribute to anhedonia in young people. Future longitudinal research is needed to confirm this and reveal the specific aspects of reward learning that predict anhedonia. These aspects could then be targeted by novel anhedonia interventions.
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spelling pubmed-99539842023-02-25 Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms Frey, Anna-Lena Kaya, M. Siyabend Adeniyi, Irina McCabe, Ciara Brain Sci Article Anhedonia, a central depression symptom, is associated with impairments in reward processing. However, it is not well understood which sub-components of reward processing (anticipation, motivation, consummation, and learning) are impaired in association with anhedonia in depression. In particular, it is unclear how learning about different rewards and the effort needed to obtain them might be associated with anhedonia and depression symptoms. Therefore, we examined learning in young people (N = 132, mean age 20, range 17–25 yrs.) with a range of depression and anhedonia symptoms using a probabilistic instrumental learning task. The task required participants to learn which options to choose to maximize their reward outcomes across three conditions (chocolate taste, puppy images, or money) and to minimize the physical effort required to obtain the rewards. Additionally, we collected questionnaire measures of anticipatory and consummatory anhedonia, as well as subjective reports of “liking”, “wanting” and “willingness to exert effort” for the rewards used in the task. We found that as anticipatory anhedonia increased, subjective liking and wanting of rewards decreased. Moreover, higher anticipatory anhedonia was significantly associated with lower reward learning accuracy, and participants demonstrated significantly higher reward learning than effort learning accuracy. To our knowledge, this is the first study observing an association of anhedonia with reward liking, wanting, and learning when reward and effort learning are measured simultaneously. Our findings suggest an impaired ability to learn from rewarding outcomes could contribute to anhedonia in young people. Future longitudinal research is needed to confirm this and reveal the specific aspects of reward learning that predict anhedonia. These aspects could then be targeted by novel anhedonia interventions. MDPI 2023-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9953984/ /pubmed/36831884 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020341 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Frey, Anna-Lena
Kaya, M. Siyabend
Adeniyi, Irina
McCabe, Ciara
Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms
title Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms
title_full Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms
title_fullStr Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms
title_full_unstemmed Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms
title_short Anhedonia in Relation to Reward and Effort Learning in Young People with Depression Symptoms
title_sort anhedonia in relation to reward and effort learning in young people with depression symptoms
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9953984/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36831884
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020341
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