Physical Anhedonia and Future Psychopathology: An Electrocortical Continuity?

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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.