You may have a wonderful time with a friend, even if you feel no pleasant anticipation the day before. Kathleen O’Brien and her colleagues became interested in this discrepancy. In a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, childhood adversity and patterns of interaction between the brain systems involved in memory and reward were associated with difficulty anticipating pleasure. The researchers found no similar statistically significant associations with pleasure during an event.
One possible explanation is that looking forward to something enjoyable involves drawing on past experience and imagining the future, whereas an enjoyable event provides immediate sensations. The study found associations between these processes, but did not establish that childhood trauma caused changes in the brain.
Pleasure unfolds over time. Before a trip, we imagine the sea; while swimming, we feel the cool water; after returning, we remember particular moments. These experiences are connected, but they can differ in intensity.
Psychologist David Gard and his colleagues described the difference between anticipating pleasure and experiencing it during an enjoyable activity in their work on the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale, or TEPS. Its separate subscales make it possible to assess these aspects of experience individually. The authors of the new study used this approach.
It is also useful to distinguish a third process: being willing to act to achieve an enjoyable outcome. You might look forward to meeting someone but not have the energy to arrange it. You might agree to go for a walk without much enthusiasm and end up enjoying it.
Process | What a person experiences | Example |
|---|---|---|
Anticipation | Pleasant expectations about a future event | “I think about the concert, and I already feel good” |
Motivation | Willingness to make an effort to achieve an outcome | “I want to buy a ticket and arrange to meet up” |
Pleasure in the moment | An enjoyable experience of what is happening | “I’m listening to music and enjoying it” |
Weak anticipation does not, by itself, mean that the ability to experience pleasure has disappeared. Other combinations are possible, too: a person may experience a decline in pleasant anticipation, motivation, and pleasure during an event at the same time. The term “anhedonia” describes a reduced ability to experience pleasure; specifying which aspect is affected makes the description more useful. Saying “I’m not looking forward to anything” does not, on its own, establish anhedonia or any diagnosis.
The study included people aged 18–30. The researchers compared participants’ responses about their childhood experiences and pleasure with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures. Data from 92 participants were suitable for analyzing brain activity at rest, and data from 80 were suitable for analysis during a task.
Among participants with higher levels of childhood adversity, weaker functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens was associated with greater difficulty anticipating pleasure. The hippocampus is involved in memory, while the nucleus accumbens is part of the reward system. In other words, differences in how consistently their activity was coordinated were associated with how difficult it was for a person to look forward to something enjoyable.
Another association involved the hippocampus’s response to novelty: among participants who had experienced greater adversity, a weaker response was accompanied by more difficulty anticipating pleasure. None of the four neural measures studied showed significant associations or interactions with childhood experiences in relation to pleasure during an event. This finding supports the idea that the two components of pleasure can be distinguished, though it does not guarantee that every participant retained the ability to feel joy.
The study has important limitations. Childhood experiences were assessed based on participants’ memories: the questionnaire covered emotional abuse and emotional and physical neglect, but did not ask about physical or sexual abuse. Participants were recruited through a project studying psychosis risk, so the sample does not fully represent the general population. In addition, pleasure was assessed through self-report, and the task in the scanner tested responses to novelty and target detection, not the experience of everyday joyful events.
Anticipation requires us to build at least a rough picture of the future. Memories can help: the smell of a favorite bakery, a pleasant conversation with a friend, or something we enjoyed on our last walk. The hippocampus is involved in linking details of experience and imagining possible future events. Reward systems help us assess how appealing those events might be.
This does not mean that the hippocampus stores a “reserve of joy” or that the nucleus accumbens is the sole pleasure button. Experience depends on distributed brain systems, our current state, and the situation. But the interaction between memory and evaluating future outcomes offers a useful way to think about this question: why doesn’t an enjoyable experience always turn into pleasant anticipation?
One hypothesis has to do with an unpredictable environment.
If positive events were regularly canceled, accompanied by conflict, or dependent on adults’ changeable moods, signals that pleasure might lie ahead could have seemed unreliable.
In such circumstances, it can be hard to look forward to good things. This hypothesis is plausible, but the study did not test this entire sequence, and it cannot automatically explain any one person’s experience.
It is also important to use precise language about the brain. Functional connectivity means that fMRI signals are statistically coordinated. It does not show that anatomical pathways are damaged. Nor is it a direct measure of dopamine. Saying “trauma broke the reward system” is much more categorical than the data allow.
Broader scientific literature also links childhood adversity to differences in reward learning. But there is no single clear picture yet. A systematic review by Julia Ruge and colleagues, published in eLife in 2024, covered 43 studies on the topic. Half of the 28 studies that measured behavior found reduced reward learning.
Neuroimaging results also varied: some studies found reduced activation while anticipating a reward, while others found increased activation. The studies differed in their samples, types of adversity, and tasks. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe the effects of every difficult childhood using one universal model.
Also, “I’m not looking forward to anything” can describe different states. Sometimes a person cannot imagine anything enjoyable. Sometimes they anticipate something good but are afraid of being disappointed. At other times, lack of sleep, overload, anxiety, or current problems take up all their attention. Reduced anticipation can also occur with depression, but on its own it does not confirm depression.
You don’t need to look for trauma in your past just because a description feels familiar, or try to recover events you think you may have forgotten. To understand current difficulties, it is more helpful to start by clarifying exactly how they show up.
The broad question “Can I feel joy?” is often too general. You can observe one small event a few times: a walk, a conversation, or making a favorite dish. Choose something you genuinely sometimes enjoy, and briefly note three moments:
Before the event: Is there pleasant anticipation? Do you picture something specific, or is it just the thought “I should go”?
During the event: Do you feel interest, pleasure, warmth in someone’s company, or pleasant physical sensations?
Afterward: What stayed with you? Can you name at least one pleasant detail?
Taking notes can help you notice differences that get lost when you think about the day as a whole. For example: “I felt nothing before the walk; in the park, I enjoyed the fresh air and the conversation; by evening, I felt like the day had been wasted.” Here, the difficulty may involve not only anticipation but also how the person remembers and evaluates what has already happened.
Don’t turn this observation into a test of whether you’re feeling the “right” emotions. One boring get-together proves nothing. Pleasure also depends on the event itself: an exhausting conversation does not have to be enjoyable just because it is considered good for you.
If you notice that some activities do bring you joy while you’re doing them, you can take this experience into account when making plans. A lack of enthusiasm beforehand does not always accurately predict how an event will go. At the same time, it does not mean you have to accept every invitation or ignore your fatigue.
Start with something small, familiar, and manageable: a short walk on an easy route, or a conversation with someone you feel comfortable around. Give yourself the option of ending it early. Big expenses, complicated arrangements, and the obligation to “make sure you have fun” will only make this experiment harder.
Before the event, you could take a moment to remember a specific enjoyable experience connected to it. Instead of a general thought like “I used to enjoy going for walks,” try a detail: “On my last walk, I enjoyed sitting by the water.” Afterward, you can write down one thing you genuinely liked. This is a way to make your own experience more accessible when making future decisions; it doesn’t require you to convince yourself that everything was wonderful.
Distinguish a lack of anticipation from worry. If the thought of meeting up makes you anxious, identify why: a large group, a difficult conversation, or having to get home late. Sometimes it is more helpful to change the circumstances than to try to intensify positive emotions.
These observations and small experiments are not a specialized treatment for the effects of trauma. The study by O’Brien and her colleagues did not test their effectiveness. Nor does it give us a reason to seek out more new experiences: a link between the brain’s response to novelty and anticipation does not mean that novelty will resolve the difficulty.
Consider talking to a psychologist, psychotherapist, or doctor if a loss of interest and anticipation of enjoyable things lasts for weeks and gets in the way of your relationships, work, or daily activities. This is especially important if your sleep, energy, mood, or ability to enjoy things while they’re happening has also worsened. You don’t have to wait until all joy is gone.
In a consultation, it can be more helpful to describe the specific mismatch than to choose a diagnosis for yourself right away: “I can have a good time, but beforehand everything feels pointless,” “I look forward to seeing someone, but I can’t find the energy to get ready,” or “I no longer enjoy even what’s happening right now.” These descriptions point to different aspects of the difficulty and help determine what to explore next.
If difficult things happened in your childhood, you can talk about them to whatever extent feels comfortable. You don’t need to reconstruct a detailed history right away to begin working on things: a difficulty you’re experiencing in the present is already a valid reason to seek support.
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