Anhedonia is defined as the inability to experience pleasure or a lack of pleasure from activities usually found pleasurable. Nevertheless what we are often calling as anhedonia, may be clinically misinterpreted avolition or impairment of appetitive phase of reward behavior cycle.
In this case, we are talking about anticipatory anhedonia. Is this a clinically useful concept or just an unnecessary construct? Is it at all an anhedonia in the true sense of the word?
I can see your worry. Consider:
1. John is running quickly.
2. John has counterfeit money in his wallet.
1 entails that John is running (“quickly” is what Clarke labels a standard modifier), whereas 2 does not entail that John has money in his wallet; counterfeit money is not real money! (“Counterfeit” is a modifier that Clarke labels a negator). *
So, regarding "anticipatory anhedonia”, is “anticipatory” a standard modifier or a negator?
“Anhedonia” cannot simply be defined as “the lack of pleasure”, since that would entail that we are all suffering from anhedonia much of the time. It’s supposed to be a disorder, therefore “the inability to experience pleasure from things that are normally found pleasurable”, or somesuch, would be more appropriate.
“Anticipatory anhedonia” might be thought ambiguous. It might refer to (i) an inability one acquires in anticipation of some (e.g.) activity. Or it might refer to (ii) some psychological preconditions of an inability. If (i) we would have a standard modifier; if (ii) we would have a negatory modifier. Usage has evolved and “anhedonia” has acquired a synecdochic character, so that it and some of its modified variants now relate not just to pleasure (or its lack) but to various psychological aspects surrounding pleasure (or its lack). **
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* Romane Clark, “Concerning the Logic of Predicate Modifiers”, Noûs, Vol. 4, No.4 (Nov., 1970), 311-335.
** K. Rømer Thomsen et al., “Reconceptualizing anhedonia: novel perspectives on balancing the pleasure networks in the human brain”, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 9:49 (Mar. 2015). doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00049. eCollection 2015.
The concept of anticipatory pleasure has been suggested to be more closely related to motivation and goal-directed behavior, as well as to the concept of ‘‘wanting.’’ Individuals with schizophrenia experience amotivation rather than anhedonia, and this amotivation correlates with anticipatory anhedonia. What a great complex of relationships! For further reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Negative+Symptoms+in+Schizophrenia%3A+Avolition+and+Occam%E2%80%99s+Razor
I think that "anticipatory anhedonia" can be a clinical and neurobiological useful term. Indeed the terms "anticipatory anhedonia" seems similar to the terms "impairment of appetitive phase of reward behaviour" but, I agree
with Michal Patarák that the reward system is more appropriately understood as a a system seeking incentives than a system providing satisfaction after interaction with them. Yet seeking behaviour and pleasure system are deeply involved, this is a common sense statement but also a neurobiological finding as you can argue from the Kent C. Berridge and Morten L. Kringelbach, description of a ”Pleasure system” mediated by well-developed mesocorticolimbic circuitry, and serving adaptive functions. In that system, human neuroimaging studies indicate that surprisingly similar circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency shared by all. Wanting for rewards is generated by a large and distributed brain system. Liking, or pleasure itself, is generated by a smaller set of hedonic hotspots within limbic circuitry (1). The term of “anticipatory anhedonia” is not redundant in my view because it indicates that the edonic dimension is involved in more than one function. I think that this term can be seen as similar to the “anticipatory pleasure” of the paper (2) where a specific deficit has been found in “anticipatory pleasure”, but not in the “consummatory pleasure”, and this deficit was found related to clinical rating of anhedonia and functional outcome in schizophrenic patients.
It could be claimed that edonic experience is different from “seeking an edonic experience” but in real world experience and especially in addiction behaviours often the anticipatory side of the sougth pleasurable experiences are very valued by people.
1) Neuron. 2015 May 6; 86(3): 646–664.Pleasure systems in the brain Kent C. Berridge and Morten L. Kringelbach.
2) Schizophr Res, 2007, Jul;93(1-3):253-60. Anhedonia in schizophrenia: distinctions between anticipatory and consummatory pleasure.
Gard DE, Kring AM, Gard MG, Horan WP, Green MF
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