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Subcomponents of reward processing in adolescent anhedonia

Nature Reviews Psychology (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Anhedonia is increasingly linked to dysfunctional reward processing and has been consistently reported to emerge during adolescence, a period of major developmental changes in the neurobiological and social aspects of reward experiences. Understanding anhedonia and the reward dysfunction that might underpin it could inform prevention and intervention efforts among young people, particularly for major depressive disorder. In this Review, we critically examine the relationship between anhedonia and reward processing in adolescence, including evidence from retrospective self-report questionnaires, task-based measures and ecological momentary assessment. We structure our synthesis according to the reward process subcomponents (consummatory pleasure, anticipation, motivation and learning) and with reference to the positive valence systems domain of the Research Domain Criteria framework and developmental perspectives. We discuss key limitations in the assessment of reward processing in adolescents and propose future directions to map real-time subjective anhedonia experiences to observable behaviour using objective task-based assessments.

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Fig. 1: Retrospective self-report questionnaires measuring reward process subcomponents.
Fig. 2: Cycle of reward process subcomponents.
Fig. 3: Brain areas linked to the reward process subcomponents in adolescents.

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    Xueqing Ma, Angad Sahni & Ciara McCabe

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C.M. conceptualized the article. X.M. and C.M. led the writing of the article. A.S. contributed to writing specific sections. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Ma, X., Sahni, A. & McCabe, C. Subcomponents of reward processing in adolescent anhedonia. Nat Rev Psychol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-026-00534-5

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