Not everyone's heart contracts to reward: Insensitivity to varying levels of reward in dysphoria.

Reward insensitivity in depression and dysphoria has been demonstrated by self-report, behavioral, and neuroscience data. These findings show less anticipated and experienced pleasure to rewarding stimuli, no behavioral adaptation in anticipation of rewards, and altered functioning in reward-related brain areas. The present study expands previous research by using cardiovascular reactivity to three levels of reward as an indicator of effort mobilization. Undergraduates with low versus high depression scores worked on a cognitive task in anticipation of no, versus a small, versus a significant amount of money for successful task performance. Results of pre-ejection period and heart rate reactivity confirmed the expected linear increase as a function of reward value in nondysphoric participants and the expected blunted response across all reward levels in dysphoric participants. The present findings thus show that dysphoric individuals have a motivational deficit in terms of reduced effort-related cardiac reactivity when anticipating a monetary reward.