Chemosensory Anhedonia in Patients With Schizophrenia and Individuals With Schizotypy: A Questionnaire Study

Abstract

Anhedonia, the loss or decline of the ability to enjoy pleasure, is an important clinical characteristic of schizophrenia. Schizotypal traits refer to the appearance of subclinical symptoms of schizophrenia across normal people. Still, few studies have investigated chemosensory anhedonia in schizophrenia patients and schizotypy individuals. Seventyone schizophrenia patients (SCZ), 162 schizotypy individuals (SCT) as selected by the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ), and 182 healthy controls (HC) participated in our study. We used the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) to measure the clinical symptoms of schizophrenia patients. All participants completed the Chemosensory Pleasure Scale (CPS), which was used to assess participants' smell and taste hedonic capacities. We found that the three groups differed in chemosensory anhedonia. The SCZ group presented more severe chemosensory anhedonia than the SCT group, and the SCT group presented more severe chemosensory anhedonia than the HC group. We also found that chemosensory hedonic capacity was negatively correlated with negative schizotypal traits in the SCT group. Our results suggested that chemosensory anhedonia is an important characteristic of schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Association between schizotypal traits and food neophobia: Mediating effect of chemosensory hedonic capacity

“…In addition, our study revealed that higher degrees of schizotypal traits were associated with lower degrees of chemosensory hedonic capacity. This is consistent with previous studies (Kamath, Moberg, Kohler, Gur, & Turetsky, 2013;Li et al, 2020;Moberg et al, 2014;Plailly, D'Amato, Saoud, & Royet, 2006), which found that schizophrenia patients or schizotypal individuals had poorer chemosensory hedonic capacity than healthy controls. Our findings further confirmed that chemosensory hedonic capacity may be an important trait marker for schizophrenia spectrum disorder.…”

“…Moreover, the mediating effect of chemosensory hedonic capacity on the interpersonal factor of the SPQ and FNS scores indicates that negative schizotypal traits affect food neophobia through chemosensory hedonic capacity. This is in line with the findings of a previous study which reported that chemosensory anhedonia was a key feature of negative, but not positive schizotypy (Li et al, 2020).…”

“…Moreover, the mediating effect of chemosensory hedonic capacity on the interpersonal factor of the SPQ and FNS scores indicates that negative schizotypal traits affect food neophobia through chemosensory hedonic capacity. This is in line with the findings of a previous study which reported that chemosensory anhedonia was a key feature of negative, but not positive schizotypy (Li et al, 2020). Our current findings provide a new perspective of alleviating food neophobia and improving eating patterns in the schizophrenia spectrum disorder through improving chemosensory hedonic capacity such as olfactory and gustatory training.…”

“…Anhedonia, the loss or diminished ability to experience pleasure, is considered a common negative symptom of schizophrenia (Becker et al, 2019; Dervaux et al, 2001; Wang et al, 2014). Previous study has reported that individuals with schizotypal traits show lower levels of chemosensory hedonic capacity (chemosensory anhedonia) (Li et al, 2020). Chemosensory hedonic capacity is an important ability to experience pleasure from smell and taste which can be evaluated by the Chemosensory Pleasure Scale (CPS) (Zhao et al, 2019).…”