Abstract
Anhedonia, the loss or decline of the ability to enjoy pleasure, is an important clinical characteristic of schizophrenia. Schizotypal traits refer to the appearance of subclinical symptoms of schizophrenia across normal people. Still, few studies have investigated chemosensory anhedonia in schizophrenia patients and schizotypy individuals. Seventy-one schizophrenia patients (SCZ), 162 schizotypy individuals (SCT) as selected by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), and 182 healthy controls (HC) participated in our study. We used the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) to measure the clinical symptoms of schizophrenia patients. All participants completed the Chemosensory Pleasure Scale (CPS), which was used to assess participants’ smell and taste hedonic capacities. We found that the three groups differed in chemosensory anhedonia. The SCZ group presented more severe chemosensory anhedonia than the SCT group, and the SCT group presented more severe chemosensory anhedonia than the HC group. We also found that chemosensory hedonic capacity was negatively correlated with negative schizotypal traits in the SCT group. Our results suggested that chemosensory anhedonia is an important characteristic of schizophrenia spectrum disorders.
Highlights
Anhedonia, the loss or decline of the ability to enjoy pleasure, is an important clinical characteristic of schizophrenia [1, 2]
The post-hoc comparison showed that the average age of schizophrenia patients (SCZ) group was significantly older than that of schizotypy individuals (SCT) group and healthy controls (HC) group, while the SCT group and HC group had higher sex ratio than the SCZ group
We found that the SCZ group presented more severe chemosensory anhedonia than
Summary
The loss or decline of the ability to enjoy pleasure, is an important clinical characteristic of schizophrenia [1, 2]. It has been consistently reported that schizophrenia patients presented severe physical and social anhedonia [3,4,5]. More severe anhedonia was reported in schizotypy individuals according to their performance on the Temporal Experience of Pleasure. According to previous studies, schizotypy individuals presented more severe social and physical anhedonia than healthy controls [5, 7,8,9]. Few studies have investigated the chemosensory hedonic capacity of schizophrenia patients and schizotypy individuals
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