Researchers theorize that anhedonia may result from the breakdown in the brain’s reward system, involving the neurotransmitter dopamine. Studies by Paul Keedwell, MD, then of King’s College, found that the brains of participants who were clinically depressed had to work harder to process rewarding experiences. While earlier research believed dopamine to be primarily involved in the subjective experience of pleasure, the last 20 years has seen a conceptual shift, such that dopamine is now believed to underlie various aspects of reward anticipation, learning, and motivation.
Anhedonia is also a relatively common side effect of antidopaminergic neuroleptics or antipsychotic drugs, as well a side effect of withdrawal from stimulants such as phenethylamines, or amphetamines.
For me, all the typical AP’s cause major anhedonia. Thank God for the atypicals. If they tried to put me back on a typical AP I couldn’t face that. I would choose to live on the street and be psychotic.
I’m starting to wonder if my increased dosage of olanzapine is causing the recent spate of anhedonia I have been experiencing lately… must tell my pdoc when I see him again.
Wouldn’t surpise me. Zyprexa o has a =very= long half life and “builds up” in the body. It is great stuff for knocking down positive symptoms, but at a bit of a cost.
I’ve been schizophrenic since 2013 “only”. I wonder how it is to have been in this long enough to see decades pass and no real advance in schizophrenia has been done.