Decreasing Nucleus Accumbens Activity During Adolescence Mediates the Relation Between Perceived Maternal Criticism in Childhood and Symptoms of Psychopathology in Late Adolescence

• In Event: Caregiving, Neuro-emotional Functioning, and Psychopathology in Adolescence

Abstract

Caregiving can strongly affect the psychobiological, social, and cognitive functioning of offspring. Emerging research indicates that poor quality caregiving is associated with elevated symptoms of psychopathology and lower sensitivity to reward in offspring. However, few longitudinal studies using functional MRI (fMRI) have examined the link between caregiving quality and the development of offspring’s reward neurocircuitry and subsequent symptoms of psychopathology. In the current study, we assessed a cohort of adolescents three times at approximately two-year intervals. We hypothesized that perceived parental criticism during childhood will predict increased symptoms of psychopathology 6 years later. We hypothesized further that this association will be mediated by decreasing activity across adolescence in a central region of the reward circuit – the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc). At the baseline assessment (ages 9-13 years), participants reported their level of perceived criticism from their mothers on a scale from 1 (not at all critical) to 10 (very critical). Participants completed a Monetary Incentive Delay task while undergoing fMRI scanning twice: at baseline and at follow-up two years later. We measured the change in NAcc activation during the anticipation and receipt of reward gain (follow-up minus baseline levels of activation). Finally, participants reported their levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms using the Youth Self Report (YSR) at a third assessment 6 years after the baseline assessment, when the participants were in late adolescence (ages 15-19 years). All analyses, conducted on the 56 participants who have completed all measures at all timepoints so far (we are continuing to add participants for the third assessment), controlled for biological sex, age at baseline, interval between scans, and hit rate for receipt trials. Participants who rated their mothers as more critical at baseline had higher internalizing (β=0.26, p=.039) and externalizing symptoms (β=0.33, p=.015) in late adolescence. Further, higher perceived maternal criticism predicted a greater decrease from baseline to follow-up in NAcc activity during the receipt (β=-0.25, p=.036), but not during the anticipation of monetary rewards (β=-0.22, p=.113). This decrease in NAcc activation, in turn, predicted higher symptoms of internalizing (β=-0.28, p=.008) and externalizing (β=-0.30, p=.008) symptoms at the third assessment. Finally, decreasing NAcc activation during the receipt of rewards mediated the relation between perceived maternal criticism at baseline and both internalizing (average causal mediated effect=0.08, 95% CI lower=0.001 95% CI upper=0.22, p=.044) and externalizing symptoms (average causal mediation=0.24, 95% CI lower=0.004 95% CI upper=0.62, p=.040) in late adolescence, partially mediating 28.91% (p=.086) and 24.14% (p=.054) of the variance, respectively. The findings suggest that perceived maternal criticism during childhood leads to a blunted neural response to the receipt of reward in early adolescence, which in turn increases the severity of internalizing and externalizing symptoms exhibited in late adolescence. These findings elucidate neurodevelopmental processes that might underlie the association between children’s perceptions of suboptimal caregiving and the emergence of symptoms of psychopathology in adolescence. This is the first longitudinal study to document these associations, which warrant replication with larger samples.

Authors

• Lauren Rebekah Borchers, Stanford University

• Jessica Louise Buthmann, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Josiah Leong

• Ian H Gotlib, Stanford University