Understanding Pleasure and Stress Responses in Teenagers
Official title: Multisystem Stress Response Biotypes: Deriving Novel Physiological and Neural Risk Factors for Anhedonia in Adolescence
Funded at Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill · NIH-11137727 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This work looks at how stress affects a teenager's ability to feel pleasure, hoping to find new ways to help young people.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Chapel Hill, United States) |
| Project start | July 12, 2024 |
| Project end | June 30, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $757,981 |
| NIH project number | 5R01MH136102-02 |
| Project ID | NIH-11137727 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates for future related studies would likely be adolescents between 12 and 20 years old who experience difficulties with feeling pleasure.
✕Less likely to help
Patients outside the adolescent age range or those without symptoms of anhedonia may not directly benefit from this specific research focus.
What this research studies
Many teenagers experience anhedonia, which is a reduced ability to feel or anticipate pleasure, and this can significantly impact their quality of life. This feeling often starts during adolescence, a time of big changes in the body and brain, and current ways to help are limited. We believe that stress plays a big role in anhedonia, and we want to understand how the body's different stress response systems, like hormones and the nervous system, work together. By looking at these systems in a new, combined way, we hope to uncover specific patterns that contribute to anhedonia in young people.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could lead to a much better understanding of anhedonia in adolescents, paving the way for more effective and personalized treatments.
How similar studies have gone: While previous work has looked at single stress response systems, this approach is novel in combining multiple systems to understand anhedonia, building on new evidence for multi-system approaches.
Where this research is happening
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Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Belger, Aysenil — Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
- Study coordinator: Belger, Aysenil
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.