Mechanisms of Anhedonia
Anhedonia is known to involve motivational, anticipatory and hedonic components and has been related to deficits across multiple domains, including effort-based decision-making, reward anticipation, reinforcement learning and hedonic response. These different processes have distinct neurobiological mechanisms, possibly reflecting different subtypes of anhedonia with distinct neurobiology. Improving diagnosis and treatment for this symptom cluster depends on developing tools for better understanding, assessment, and classification of subtypes of anhedonia.
The goals of this project are to use a combination of behavioral tasks, functional neuroimaging, and longitudinal data collection to identify biomarkers for different subtypes of anhedonia and to examine how these laboratory-based assessments reflect engagement in effortful activity and experience of reward in daily life.
Project Funding: NIH F32 (PI: Cooper)
