Association between habenula dysfunction and motivational symptoms in unmedicated major depressive disorder

The lateral habenula plays a central role in reward and punishment processing and has been suggested to drive the cardinal symptom of anhedonia in depression. This hypothesis is largely based on observations of habenula hypermetabolism in animal models of depression, but the activity of habenula and its relationship with clinical symptoms in patients with depression remains unclear. High-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)...