The Cleveland Clinic describes the condition as being the “inability to experience joy or pleasure,”<\/a> linking it to feeling numb, uninterested in prior hobbies.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s a common symptom of many mental health conditions such as depression,” the academic medical center writes.<\/p>\n The effect was strongest in people whose brain scans showed disrupted activity in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is more commonly associated with memory than motivation.<\/p>\n How the Study Worked<\/p>\n Researchers surveyed 92 people\u201437 men and 55 women\u2014about their childhood experiences and how much pleasure they get from positive events in their daily lives in adulthood.<\/p>\n The group was deliberately chosen to include a higher-than-average number of people prone to anhedonia, though the sample size is rather small compared with other peer-reviewed studies.<\/p>\n Participants then underwent functional MRI brain scans: an imaging technique that tracks brain activity by following changes in blood flow.<\/p>\n The researchers focused on the hippocampus and its connections to other brain areas involved in reward and motivation, including the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens.<\/p>\n They measured resting connections between these regions, as well as how the hippocampus responded to new experiences during tasks.<\/p>\n What the Researchers Found<\/p>\n Participants who reported experiencing childhood trauma were generally more likely to report apathy. <\/p>\n However, the strongest effects showed up in trauma survivors whose scans revealed weaker connections between the hippocampus and reward-related brain areas. In this group, reduced hippocampal activity and weaker signaling to the reward system were linked to greater anticipatory anhedonia\u2014difficulty looking forward to or anticipating something enjoyable<\/a>.<\/p>\n Study co-author Vishnu Murty, of the University of Oregon, said the work is “among the first” to connect the hippocampus to apathetic behavior in humans, rather than just storing and sorting memories.<\/p>\n The research team said it now hopes to identify a specific target within the hippocampus that could help restore people’s ability to feel pleasure after childhood trauma<\/a>.<\/p>\n Broaden the Conversation Around Trauma<\/p>\n![\"Gamma](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2166724212.jpg\"\/)
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