Anticipatory pleasure deficit in subjects reporting physical anhedonia: slow cortical evidence

Slow cortical and heart rate responses were recorded from anhedonic and normal control subjects during a two-stimulus anticipation paradigm. Subjects were chosen for participation in the experiment based on their scores on the Physical Anhedonia Scale developed by Chapman, Chapman and Raulin (1976). During the procedure, auditory warning stimuli were delivered which informed subjects that a visual stimulus (color slide) would follow shortly and specified the category of the slide (neutral or high-interest) which was to be presented. Results of this investigation revealed that anhedonic subjects showed less differential physiological responsivity while anticipating high and low interest stimuli than did normal controls. This was most striking in the slow cortical response (CNV) which appears particularly sensitive to such motivational and/or attentional manipulations. The data are discussed with respect to emotion and psychopathology.