Role of Reward Responsiveness in Pathways from Chronic Stress to Depression in Adolescents

• In Event: Contextual Experiences to Adolescents’ Internalizing Problems: The Roles of Neural Responses to Errors and Rewards

Abstract

Exposure to stressful life events is associated with increased risk for and poorer course of mental health conditions, including depression. Given the common experience of stress and the significant burden associated with depression, examining vulnerabilities that shape response to stress and pathways through which stress may impact mental health is critical. Blunted neural response to reward appears to be a vulnerability for depression. A reduced reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential measured using electroencephalography (EEG) has been found to be associated with the later development of depressive symptoms in adolescents. This work, however, has mainly focused on RewP as measured in response to monetary reward rather than other potentially relevant stimuli, such as social rewards. The present study aimed to examine and compare neural responses to both social and monetary reward as moderators of the effect of chronic stress on adolescent depressive symptoms.

Adolescents (N = 163; 14-17 years old) oversampled for current depression and depression risk based on maternal history completed a simulated peer social interaction task and monetary reward task while EEG data were recorded. The RewP event-related potential was scored in response to positive vs. negative feedback in each task (Figure 4). Chronic stress over the past 6 months was assessed using the clinician-rated UCLA Life Stress Interview across life domains, and participants completed the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire as a self-report measure of depressive symptoms.

Two linear regressions were conducted using full information maximum likelihood to examine effects of social or monetary reward feedback, chronic stress, and the interaction between RewP and chronic stress on depressive symptoms. Social (p = .009), but not monetary (p = .088), RewP significantly interacted with chronic stress in predicting depressive symptoms, such that chronic stress was more strongly associated with greater depressive symptoms for adolescents with relatively blunted social reward responsiveness (Figure 5A). Further probing this interaction with chronic stress as the moderator revealed that the association between relatively reduced social reward responsiveness and depressive symptoms was significant only at high levels of chronic stress (Figure 5B).

Results suggest that reduced social reward responsiveness may make some more vulnerable to negative impacts of stress, which may lead to the development of depression. Results highlight the importance of examining other potentially relevant reward domains, including social reward, in clinical neuroscience research. Longitudinal research is needed to examine the directionality of effects to better understand the role that reward responsiveness may play as a potential vulnerability for depression in adolescents.

Authors

• Samantha Pegg, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Zhixin Zhang, Vanderbilt University

• Lindsay Dickey, Vanderbilt University

• Anh Dao, Vanderbilt University

• Kodi B. Arfer, Mount Sinai Health System, , Icahn School of Medicine

• Autumn Kujawa, Vanderbilt University