Anhedonia is associated with computational impairments in reward and effort learning in young people with depression symptoms.

backgroundAnhedonia and depression symptoms have been linked to potential deficits in reward learning. However, how anhedonia impacts the ability to adjust and learn about the effort required to obtain rewards remains unclear.

methodsWe examined young people (

resultsAs depression symptoms and consummatory anhedonia increased, reward liking decreased, and as anticipatory anhedonia increased, liking, wanting, and willingness to exert effort for reward decreased.Participants exerted more effort for high rewards than for low rewards, but anticipatory anhedonia diminished this difference.Higher consummatory anhedonia was associated with poorer reward and effort learning, and with increased temperature parameter values for both learning types, indicating a higher tendency to make exploratory choices. Higher depression symptoms were associated with lower reward learning accuracy.

conclusionWe provide novel evidence that anhedonia is associated with difficulties in modulating effort as a function of reward value and with the underexploitation of low effort and high reward options. We suggest that addressing these impairments could be a novel target for intervention in anhedonic young people.