{
  "abstract": "Anhedonia, the diminished capacity to experience or pursue pleasure, is a core feature of mood and psychotic disorders, yet the large-scale brain dynamics underlying it remain uncharacterized. Dominant accounts posit striatal hypofunction with compensatory prefrontal over-recruitment, but they rest on activation magnitudes and symmetric correlations, which cannot resolve the direction of influence. Here, in 210 adults from the Transdiagnostic Connectome Project, we defined symptom-derived low- and high-anhedonia subgroups and estimated each participant's directed effective connectivity using a whole-brain generative model fitted to resting-state fMRI. In high anhedonia, the cortex shifted upstream relative to the subcortex, flattening the cortico-subcortical hierarchy. Correspondingly, the net balance of direct cortico-subcortical flow shifted from bottom-up to balanced. This shift recurred within the frontostriatal reward circuit and replicated across independent halves of each participant's data. Flow asymmetry also increased with subject-level severity. Decomposing flow into ascending and descending arms showed that both weakened in high anhedonia, but ascending subcortex-to-cortex and striatum-to-prefrontal drive fell more than the descending drive. These findings identify a reorganization of cortico-subcortical hierarchy in anhedonia and suggest that the previously reported prefrontal over-recruitment reflects diminished ascending drive rather than stronger cortical output.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Universitat Pompeu Fabra"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "P. Roghani"
    },
    {
      "name": "J. Vohryzek"
    },
    {
      "name": "M. L. Kringelbach"
    },
    {
      "name": "G. Deco"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dhgfe70ehdsqf.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.10.12.758297",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758297v1.full",
  "id": "dhgfe70ehdsqf",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758297v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "neuroscience"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Functional Brain Connectivity Studies"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7222985408",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758297v1.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-12",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dhgfe70ehdsqf.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:28:37Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.10.12.758297",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.12.758297v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:neuroscience",
      "subfield": "neuroscience"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Diminished ascending drive in transdiagnostic anhedonia shifts the cortico-subcortical hierarchy away from bottom-up dominance",
  "title_text": "Diminished ascending drive in transdiagnostic anhedonia shifts the cortico-subcortical hierarchy away from bottom-up dominance",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:28:37Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/dhgfe70ehdsqf",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}