Influence of anhedonic symptom severity on reward circuit connectivity in PTSD

Abstract

Anhedonia, marked by deficits in reward processing, is a prominent symptom of several psychiatric conditions and has been shown to influence functional connectivity between reward-related regions. However, the unique influence of anhedonia severity on reward circuit connectivity in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains unclear. To address this, we examined resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the ventral striatum as a function of anhedonia for individuals with PTSD. Resting-state functional MRI scans and behavioral assessments were collected for 71 women diagnosed with PTSD. Seed-based voxelwise rsFC analyses for left and right nucleus accumbens (NAcc) seed regions of interest were performed. Voxelwise regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between anhedonia severity and rsFC of left and right NAcc. Results indicated that greater anhedonia severity was associated with reduced rsFC between the left NAcc and a cluster in the left caudate extending to the thalamus. This relationship between anhedonia and rsFC remained significant after controlling for PTSD symptom severity or depression severity. Our findings suggest that reward circuit dysfunction at rest is associated with anhedonia in PTSD. These results further contribute to our understanding of the neural correlates of anhedonia in psychiatric conditions.