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Pleasure and motivation are important factors for goal-directed behavior and well-being in both animals and humans. Intact hedonic capacity requires an undisturbed interplay between a number of different brain regions and transmitter systems. Concordantly, dysfunction of networks encoding for reward have been shown in depression and other psychiatric disorders. The development of technological possibilities to investigate connectivity on a functional level in humans and to directly influence networks in animals using optogenetics among other techniques has provided new important insights in this field of research.

In this review, we aim to provide an overview on the neurobiological substrates of anhedonia on a network level. For this purpose, definition of anhedonia and the involved reward components are described first, then current data on reward networks in healthy individuals and in depressed …