Anticipatory anhedonia in schizophrenia subjects.

Anticipatory anhedonia in schizophrenia subjects L'anhédonie anticipatoire dans les schizo-phrénies Dear Editors, The distinction between the experience of pleasure related either to online experience in response to a specific stimulus (consummatory pleasure) or to future pleasurable activities (anticipatory pleasure) has been proposed by Klein [7] in a theoretical paper. Recently, accumulated evidence across disciplines has suggested that anticipatory can be differentiated from consummatory pleasure (see review in [4]). Anhedonia, the lowered ability to experience pleasure, is one of the main symptoms of schizophrenia and patients report experiencing lower levels of pleasure than controls on self-report trait measures and in semi-structured interviews [6]. Moreover, patients report experiencing as much pleasant emotion as controls in response to emotionally evocative stimuli [8]. Based on neurobehavioral distinctions between liking and wanting [2], Gard et al. [4] have proposed that schizophrenia patients experience normal levels of pleasure when directly engaged in an enjoyable activity, or consummatory pleasure (i.e., liking), but experience disturbances in the experience of pleasure related to future activities, or anticipatory pleasure (i.e., wanting). Using complementary methods, Gard et al. [5] reported that schizophrenia patients reported as much pleasure in the moment as controls in their daily lives and on a measure of trait consummatory pleasure (consummatory subscale of the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale, TEPS-CONS) but the schizophrenia patients reported experiencing less trait pleasure in anticipation of future events (anticipa-tory subscale of the TEPS, TEPS-ANT) compared to healthy controls. The aim of the present study was firstly to replicate the Gard et al. study [5] using the French version of the TEPS and secondly to test the specificity of this deficit in schizophre-nia as well as the potential influence of depression on the consummatory and anticipatory trait pleasure reported in schizophrenia. One hundred and twenty-five university students (15 males, 110 females, mean age = 21.31 years, S.D. = 4.67) of the University of Picardie were recruited. One hundred and sixty-two inpatients with either schizophrenia (n = 43, 30 males, 13 females, mean age = 42 years, S.D. = 12.57) or mood, neurotic or personality disorders (n = 119, 31 males, 88 females, mean age = 40.78, S.D. = 12.82) were included from the department of psychiatry of the University Hospital of Amiens or Lille. Diagnoses were confirmed using the structured clinical interview for ICD-10 [10]. Exclusion criteria were: current alcohol or substance abuse, severe organic disease or poor fluency in French. All …