ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2017
Association between habenula dysfunction and motivational symptoms in unmedicated major depressive disorder.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 81 citations in OpenAlex.
- Investigation of habenula volume in mood disorders: A meta-analytic study.Psychological medicine · 2026Pooled it
- The habenula in mood disorders: A systematic review of human studies.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- The disappointment centre of the brain gets exciting: a systematic review of habenula dysfunction in depression.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Significant heterogeneity in structural asymmetry of the habenula in the human brain: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Human brain mapping · 2023Pooled it
- Abnormal prediction error processing in schizophrenia and depression.Human brain mapping · 2021Pooled it
- Characterizing anhedonia: A systematic review of neuroimaging across the subtypes of reward processing deficits in depression.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Neurostimulation in the treatment of psychiatric disorders: Underlying mechanisms and critical analysis of circuit-based interventions.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Habenula volume alterations in adults born very preterm.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Habenular structural-functional dysconnectivity in bipolar disorder: evidence from multimodal imaging and transcriptomic integration.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- The Habenula's role in major depressive disorder: recent insights from preclinical and human studies.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- Rapid-acting NMDA and GABAergic Modulators in Mood Disorders: From Synaptic Mechanisms to Clinical Practice.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Habenula-ventral tegmental area functional coupling and risk aversion in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Childhood maltreatment is associated with lower exploration and disrupted prefrontal activity and connectivity during reward learning in volatile environments.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy to normalize social learning for patients with major depressive disorders: study protocol for a single-arm clinical trial.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Dysregulation of kappa opioid receptor neuromodulation of lateral habenula synaptic function following a repetitive mild traumatic brain injury.Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior · 2024Article
- Chronic Social Defeat Stress Induces Pathway-Specific Adaptations at Lateral Habenula Neuronal Outputs.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Habenular volume changes after venlafaxine treatment in patients with major depression.Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2024Article
- Segmentation and Volume Estimation of the Habenula Using Deep Learning in Patients With Depression.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2024Article
- Developmental Changes in Habenular and Striatal Social Reinforcement Responsivity Across Adolescence Linked With Substance Use.Biological psychiatry · 2023Article
- Uncovering the Neural Correlates of Anhedonia Subtypes in Major Depressive Disorder: Implications for Intervention Strategies.Biomedicines · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The lateral habenula plays a central role in reward and punishment processing and has been suggested to drive the cardinal symptom of anhedonia in depression. This hypothesis is largely based on observations of habenula hypermetabolism in animal models of depression, but the activity of habenula and its relationship with clinical symptoms in patients with depression remains unclear. High-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modelling were used to investigate the activity of the habenula during a probabilistic reinforcement learning task with rewarding and punishing outcomes in 21 unmedicated patients with major depression and 17 healthy participants. High-resolution anatomical scans were also acquired to assess group differences in habenula volume. Healthy individuals displayed the expected activation in the left habenula during receipt of punishment and this pattern was confirmed in the computational analysis of prediction error processing. In depressed patients, there was a trend towards attenuated left habenula activation to punishment, while greater left habenula activation was associated with more severe depressive symptoms and anhedonia. We also identified greater habenula volume in patients with depression, which was associated with anhedonic symptoms. Habenula dysfunction may contribute to abnormal response to punishment in patients with depression, and symptoms such as anhedonia.
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Registered trials
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