Diminished anticipatory-consummatory pleasure interplay in high schizotypal traits and subthreshold depression: potential risk for schizophrenia and depression

Anhedonia is a multidimensional construct encompassing anticipatory and consummatory pleasure, and it manifests across a range of psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia (SCZ) and major depressive disorder (MDD). However, the shared and distinct mechanisms that underlie anhedonia between SCZ and MDD remain unclear. This study explored the characteristics and interplay between anticipatory and consummatory affective responses in SCZ and MDD patients as well as their subclinical counterparts. A total of 821 participants completed the Monetary Incentive Delay task. Network analysis was conducted on the full sample. For group comparisons, 59 non-clinical participants were excluded due to missing classification data or overlapping subclinical criteria, yielding 762 participants (115 SCZ, 60 MDD, 83 schizotypal traits (ST), 110 subthreshold depression (SD), and 394 healthy controls (HC)). Partial correlation networks were constructed using anticipatory and consummatory affective responses, calculated by averaging the valence subjective rating scores as nodes. Separate network comparisons were conducted to examine group differences within the subgroups. The results showed that consummatory affective responses under neutral condition was the central in the network. The global strength of network was lower in the both ST and SD participants compared to SCZ and MDD patients, respectively. Both SCZ patients and ST individuals showed stronger connections between anticipatory and consummatory pleasure compared to MDD and SD individuals. Our findings suggested that connections of multidimensional components of anhedonia played crucial role in the transdiagnostic network and the inter-relationship between anticipatory and consummatory pleasure might underlie the distinct mechanisms of anhedonia in SCZ and MDD.