Physical Anhedonia and Future Psychopathology: An Electrocortical Continuity?

Abstract

During the past decade, a great deal of effort has been focused on the identification of subjects who may be at "high-risk" for the development of psychopathology. Chapman, Chapman, and Raulin (1976) suggested that college students who report pervasive physical anhedonia may comprise a group of subjects vulnerable to the development of schizophrenia. The present study provides cortical evoked potential data consistent with this relationship.Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected from anhedonic subjects and normal controls under two conditions of auditory stimulation. In the first condition (nonsignal orienting), anhedonic and normal control subjects did not differ on any measure of the ERP. However, under signal conditions, reliable group differences emerged which were strikingly apparent in the late positive (P3) component. These group differences were maximal when the auditory signal predicted a high-interest event. Similar observations of reduced P3 activity have been frequently reported in studies with schizophrenic patients. In conjunction with previous investigations of anhedonic subjects, the present data continue to support the hypothesis that these subjects may constitute a psychosis-prone population. DESCRIPTORS: Anhedonia, P300, High-risk, Psychopathology.

Auditory P300 in individuals clinically at risk for psychosis

“…Furthermore, smaller left posterior temporal P300 amplitudes had been found in several groups at risk for psychosis: in anhedonic probands (Simons, 1982), in questionnaire-identified subjects with schizotypal personality (Klein et al, 1999), and in patients with schizotypal personality disorder (Salisbury et al, 1996;Trestman et al, 1996;Niznikiewicz et al, 2000). These results from different high-risk groups suggest that left posterior temporal P300 deficits represent a general marker of susceptibility to schizophrenia.…”

Converging evidence for a cognitive anomaly in early psychopathology

“…It should be noted that the present paradigm is far from optimal for obtaining a P300~e.g., 50050 probability, no overt task, short ITI!, and it is also possible that subcomponents of N200 may overlap with P300 and confound its scoring. Numerous studies~beginning with Simons, 1982!, using paradigms more appropriate for measuring P300, have observed a highly consistent~though often not significant! P300 attenuation for persons with anhedonia and dysthymia~for reviews see Although not significant, the present control group again had a larger P300 than any of the four questionnaire-defined at-risk groups.…”

Stress-Induced Dopamine Release in Humans at Risk of Psychosis: a [11C]Raclopride PET Study

“…Individuals with elevated scores on the PerAb scale have an elevated risk of psychosis (Chapman et al, 1980(Chapman et al, , 1994, an elevated rate of schizophrenia in first-degree relatives (Lenzenweger and Loranger, 1989) and a myriad of cognitive and psychophysiological deficits that are associated with schizophrenia (Simons, 1982;Allen et al, 1987;Jutai, 1989;Lenzenweger, 1991;Simons and Giardina, 1992;Kwapil et al, 1996;Suhr, 1997;Nuchpongsai et al, 1999;Gooding et al, 2001). Elevated PhysAn scores in the adolescent offspring of schizophrenic patients are associated with increased rates of psychosis and poorer social adjustment in young adulthood (Erlenmeyer-Kimling et al, 1993;Freedman et al, 1998).…”

“…Elevated PhysAn scores in the adolescent offspring of schizophrenic patients are associated with increased rates of psychosis and poorer social adjustment in young adulthood (Erlenmeyer-Kimling et al, 1993;Freedman et al, 1998). Healthy individuals with elevated scores on the PhysAn scale also show many attributes of a high-risk population: they have an increased incidence of the cognitive, behavioral, and social abnormalities associated with schizophrenia, including impaired attention (Jutai, 1989;Wilkins and Venables, 1992;Erlenmeyer-Kimling et al, 1993), reaction time crossover (Simons, 1982), abnormal P300 amplitude (Miller, 1986), skin conductance nonresponsiveness (Dawson and Nuechterlein, 1984), and poorer social competence (Garnet et al, 1993;Blanchard et al, 1998). Further, PhysAn scores may have a familial component as they are higher in schizophrenic patients and their relatives than controls (Katsanis et al, 1990;Clementz et al, 1991;Franke et al, 1993), and are higher in individuals with schizophrenia-related personality disorders who have a genetic loading of schizophrenia than in those without it (Thaker, 2000).…”