Abstract
Anhedonia is a common symptom following traumatic brain injury. The neural basis of anhedonia is poorly understood, but believed to involve disturbed reward processing, rather than the loss of sense of pleasure. This analysis was undertaken to determine if injury to specific regions of prefrontal cortex (PFC) result in anhedonia. A CT-based lesion analysis was undertaken in 192 participants of the Vietnam Head Injury Study, most with penetrating head injury. Participants were divided into left and right ventrolateral prefrontal, bilateral ventromedial prefrontal, and other injury locations. Anhedonia was measured by self-report in each group using the four-item anhedonia subscale score of the Beck Depression Inventory-II. Individuals with right ventrolateral injury reported greater severity of anhedonia compared to those with injury in the left ventrolateral region. These findings support an association between injury in the right ventrolateral PFC and anhedonia.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the veterans who participated in this study, the study staff and investigators who evaluated them.
Conflict of interest
Jeffrey D. Lewis, Frank Krueger, Vanessa Raymont, Jeffrey Solomon, Aron Barbey, Joshua Poore, Kristine M. Knutson, Eric M. Wassermann, and Jordan Grafman declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Informed consent
All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, and the applicable revisions at the time of the investigation. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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Lewis, J.D., Krueger, F., Raymont, V. et al. Anhedonia in combat veterans with penetrating head injury. Brain Imaging and Behavior 9, 456–460 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9414-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-015-9414-4