Interactions between Neural Activation to Social Reward and Experiences of Social Threat in Adolescent Girls

• In Event: 3-141 - Neural Reward Reactivity and Adolescent Psychopathology and Substance Use: fMRI and ERP Studies

Integrative Statement

Background: Rates of anxiety and depression increase during adolescence, particularly in females, around the same time that peer interactions become increasingly salient and significant changes in the brain occur (Blakemore & Mills, 2014). Examining how adolescent peer relations and brain function interact may thus be critical for understanding increasing rates of internalizing disorders. Recent work has applied functional MRI (fMRI) methods to examine how neural activation to social reward, including peer acceptance, is associated with internalizing symptoms in youth (Olino et al., 2015). However, questions remain, including 1) Do youth with greater neural activation to rewarding peer experiences in the laboratory report more positive or negative experiences with peers in daily life? and 2) How does neural activation to social reward interact with positive or negative peer experiences in daily life to influence internalizing symptoms? The current study addresses these questions using an ecologically-valid fMRI task and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in adolescent girls.

Methods: 57 healthy females (11-13 years) completed cell-phone EMA for two weeks (52 samplings). At each sampling, participants reported on recent worst and best interactions with a peer. They indicated how socially threatened they felt during worst interactions by marking the presence or absence of several social threat statements (e.g., “I was embarrassed”). The number of social threat statements endorsed was averaged across the number of interactions, creating a “daily social threat” variable. Similar “daily social reward” variables were created using social reward statements (e.g., “I felt close to someone”) endorsed during best interactions. Participants then completed the fMRI Chatroom Interact Task (Silk et al., 2012), in which they believe they are being chosen (accept trials) or rejected by peers in an online chatroom. Participants also completed control trials. BOLD activation across the whole brain was assessed for accept>control trials and parameter estimates from significant clusters (corrected at p<.05) were tested in moderation models using PROCESS (Hayes, 2018). Youth self-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Results: Analyses revealed a significant cluster in the caudate [x,y,z=-14,24,0; k=977; Z=5.28]. Activation in this cluster was associated with daily social threat (r=.35, p=.008) but not daily social reward (r=.20, p=.133). Interactions between caudate activation and daily social threat on anxiety symptoms (∆R2=.13, F(1,50)=11.07, p=.002) and depressive symptoms (∆R2=.09, F(1,50)=6.39, p=.015) were also found. Youth with caudate activation at the mean and 1SD above the mean showed positive associations between social threat in daily life and symptoms of anxiety and depression (ps<.01). For youth with caudate activation 1SD below the mean, no significant associations between social threat and anxiety/depression were found (ps>.50). No interactions were found with daily social reward.

Discussion: Given the role of the caudate in social reward learning and prediction error signaling (Delgado, 2007), youth with greater caudate activation to acceptance may have expected rejection. In daily life, these youths may also be more likely to detect and report negative peer interactions and may be at greatest risk for anxiety and depression when experiencing negative interactions. Findings help elucidate potential mechanisms of vulnerability for internalizing symptoms in adolescent females.

Authors

• Stefanie L Sequeira, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Cecile D Ladouceur, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Neil P. Jones, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer Silk, University of Pittsburgh
  Non-Presenting Author