The Effects of Online Working Memory Training on Enhancing Hedonic Processing in People With Social Anhedonia and Subsyndromal Depression: An Exploratory Study

Working memory (WM) training is considered a promising cognitive remediation for psychopathological disorders. Given the shared neural circuits in WM and hedonic processing, as well as the positive findings in schizophrenia patients with anhedonia, we hypothesized that WM training might improve hedonic processing in subclinical individuals. This study investigated the transfer effect of a 10-session WM training on (1) people with social anhedonia and (2) people with subsyndromal depression, relative to the control groups. We evaluated the impact on different dimensions of anhedonia. A total of 152 Chinese university students were enrolled, and the study examined the general improvement of the hedonic training across trait and control groups. Findings showed that WM training improved the engagement of difficult tasks in participants with social anhedonia and the pleasure after paying effort in participants who had WM growth during the training sessions. The transfer effects on reward processing and cost-benefit computations indicated the benefits of WM training effects. Results were limited to subclinical samples within a short-term intervention and might not generalize to clinical samples. In conclusion, our findings suggest that WM training could be a prospective cognitive remediation for alleviating anhedonia, warranting further exploration.