This study investigated whether low reward responsiveness marks vulnerability for developing depression in a large cohort of never-depressed 16-year-old adolescents who completed a reward task and were subsequently followed for 9 years, during which …
Anhedonia reflects a dysfunction in the reward system, which can be manifested in an inability to enjoy pleasurable situations (i.e., lack of positive emotions), but also by a lack of motivation to engage in pleasurable activities (i.e., lack of …
Background Anhedonia (loss of pleasure) is characterized by low responsiveness to rewards and, by virtue of being one of the two core symptoms of depression, by altered responses to stress. We investigated the effect of an acute stress experience …
There is evidence that people commonly show a bias toward happy facial emotions during laboratory tasks, that is, they identify other people’s happy facial emotions faster than other people’s negative facial emotions. However, not everybody shows …
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a protein often studied in psychiatric populations. Commercial ELISA kits have been validated for measuring BDNF in blood plasma and serum, but blood collection is an invasive method which cannot always be …
Anhedonia is a major public health concern and has proven particularly difficult to counteract. It has been hypothesized that anhedonia can be deterred by engagement in rewarding social and physical events. The aims of the present study were to …
Many psychiatric problem domains have been associated with emotion-specific biases or general deficiencies in facial emotion identification. However, both within and between psychiatric problem domains, large variability exists in the types of …
Facial emotion identification bias has been suggested as trait marker for depression, but results have been inconclusive. To explore whether facial emotion identification biases may be trait markers for depression, we tested whether the speed with …
Anhedonia is generally defined as the inability to feel pleasure in response to experiences that are usually enjoyable. Anhedonia is one of the two core symptoms of depression and is a major public health concern. Anhedonia has proven particularly …