Covariation in Adolescent Social Behavior and Mood Following COVID-19 Social Restriction: Moderators of Neural Sensitivity

• In Event: Neurobiological Predictors of Adolescent Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Adolescence is a critical period of social-emotional development, during which adolescents are socially and neurobiologically primed to learn and explore their environment (Crone & Dahl, 2012). These normative developmental social dynamics were disrupted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein adolescents experienced unprecedented restrictions in their in-person social interactions. There is mounting concern about how these disruptions impacted adolescent mental health because social interactions are especially crucial during this period of development. At the same time, not all adolescents were equally impacted by these restrictions. In order to understand changes in adolescent social behavior and mood in the context of social restriction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical to assess both longitudinal changes in mood and behavior, as well as individual differences. Therefore, we used a 4-year prospective longitudinal design (3 times points prior to the onset of the pandemic in the US with neural data, and 1 time point during the pandemic with ecological momentary assessment; EMA) to assess how adolescents adapted their social behavior during the pandemic and how those changes affected their daily mood. In addition, we asked whether the social approaches that adolescents took during the pandemic were modulated by individual differences in neural sensitivity to anticipated social feedback.

The study includes 250 ethnically diverse adolescents (14-17 years old) who completed questionnaires at a single timepoint and two weeks of EMA surveys during the summer of COVID-19. Participants indicated who they interacted with, how they interacted with them, how positive and negative the interactions were, and their mood. Prior to COVID-19, 178 of adolescents completed three annual fMRI scans to measure neural responses when anticipating and receiving social rewards and avoiding social punishments, as well as the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire to assess depressive symptoms. Preliminary analyses focused on ventral striatum (VS) activity, a region associated with reward and social learning, and self-reported measures of mood and social behavior (pre versus during pandemic frequency of in-person and virtual interactions with peers).

Preliminary results suggested that following the pandemic, decreased social interactions were associated with increased depressive symptoms, but only for those with low VS sensitivity to social feedback. In contrast, high VS sensitivity to social feedback appeared to buffer adolescents against changes in depression when social interactions decreased during the pandemic. We also observed that adolescents with increased social interactions during the pandemic and high VS sensitivity to social feedback, demonstrated an increase in depressive symptoms. These findings may hint that the nature of social interactions changed during the pandemic, and that adolescents particularly attuned to social information may find increased social contact during the pandemic more distressing. Follow up analyses will expand upon this with longitudinal trajectories of neural activity and EMA data in order to assess covariation in both positive and negative social interactions and mood. This will allow us to assess both variability and individual differences in the type of social behaviors adolescents engage in as it is temporally tied to mood variability during the pandemic (see Figure 1).

Authors

• Jessica Flannery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Seh-Joo Kwon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nathan Jorgensen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Benjamin W Nelson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Caitlin Turpyn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Natasha Duell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristen A Lindquist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mitchell J Prinstein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva H Telzer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author