Jennifer N. Bress

Blunted neural response to rewards prospectively predicts depression in adolescent girls.

The prevalence of depression increases substantially during adolescence. Several predictors of major depressive disorder have been established, but their predictive power is limited. In the current study, the feedback negativity (FN), an event-related potential component elicited by feedback indicating monetary gain versus loss, was recorded in 68 never-depressed adolescent girls. Over the following 2 years, 24% of participants developed a major depressive episode (MDE); illness onset was predicted by blunted FN at initial evaluation. Lower FN amplitude predicted more depressive symptoms during the follow-up period, even after controlling for neuroticism and depressive symptoms at baseline. This is the first prospective study to demonstrate a link between a neural measure of reward sensitivity and the first onset of an MDE. The current results suggest that low reward sensitivity may be an important factor in the development of depression.

Neural response to reward and depressive symptoms in late childhood to early adolescence

Depression is a major public health concern, and the period from late childhood through early adolescence is a critical time in the development of depressive symptoms. In adults, depression and depressive symptoms are associated with a reduction in the feedback negativity (FN), an ERP component elicited by feedback indicating rewards versus losses. The current study sought to extend these findings to a sample of 64 children aged 8-13, and to examine developmental differences in the FN. Consistent with previous work in adults, higher depressive symptom scores were associated with a blunted FN across the sample. When responses to losses and gains were examined separately, only reduction in the response to monetary gain was associated with increased depressive symptoms. In the current study, the vast majority of children were pre-pubertal, and the FN was unrelated to both age and pubertal development. The FN may be an ideal biomarker for studying changes in reward sensitivity and depression that emerge as children transition through puberty.

Self-report and behavioral measures of reward sensitivity predict the feedback negativity.

Rewards are integral to learning associations that aid in survival. The feedback negativity (FN), an event-related potential that differentiates outcomes indicating monetary losses versus gains, has recently emerged as a possible neural measure of reward processing. If this view is correct, then the FN should correlate with measures of reward sensitivity in other domains, although few studies have investigated this question. In the current study, 46 participants completed a self-report measure of reward responsiveness, a signal detection task that generated a behavioral measure of reward sensitivity, and a gambling task that elicited an FN. Consistent with the view that the FN reflects reward-related neural activity, a larger FN correlated with increased behavioral and self-report measures of sensitivity to reward.

Differentiating Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents: Evidence From Event-Related Brain Potentials

The current study, which was a reanalysis of previous data, focused on the error-related negativity (ERN)—an event-related potential (ERP) associated with error monitoring—and the feedback negativity (FN)—an ERP associated with reward processing. Two objectives motivated this study: first, to illustrate the relationship between the ERN and anxious symptoms, and the relationship between the FN and depressive symptoms; second, to explore whether the ERN and the FN relate uniquely to anxiety and depression, respectively, in children. EEG was collected from twenty-five 11- to 13-year-old participants (12 female; 23 Caucasian, 1 Asian, 1 of Caucasian and Hispanic ethnicity) during tasks designed to elicit an ERN and an FN. Participants and a parent completed questionnaires assessing the participants anxious and depressive symptomatology. Increasing anxiety was related to a larger ERN, and increasing depression was related to a smaller FN. Further analysis demonstrated that these relationships remained significant when controlling for the contribution of other variables; that is, the ERN continued to predict anxiety when controlling for the FN and depression, and the FN continued to predict depression when controlling for the ERN and anxiety. Thus, in late childhood and early adolescence, the ERN and the FN appear to relate uniquely to anxious and depressive symptoms, respectively. Although this research is still in early stages, the ERN and the FN have the potential to inform trajectories of risk for anxiety and depression, and could be utilized in clinical settings as cost- and labor-efficient neural biomarkers.

Psychometric properties of the error-related negativity in children and adolescents

Error processing is frequently examined using the error-related negativity (ERN), a negative-going event-related potential occurring after the commission of an error at frontal-central sites, and has been suggested as a neural biomarker that may be useful in characterizing trajectories of risk for anxiety. While the ERN has been shown to have excellent psychometric properties in adults, few studies have examined psychometric properties of the ERN in children and adolescents. The current study examined the 2-year test-retest reliability of the ERN in a sample of children and adolescents, and the convergent validity of the ERN using a flanker and go/no-go task. Results suggest that the ERN is both reliable and stable across 2 years and across tasks. However, results also indicate that the internal consistency obtained using the flanker task is greater than the internal consistency obtained using the go/no-go task.

The stability of the feedback negativity and its relationship with depression during childhood and adolescence.

Feedback negativity (FN) is an event-related potential elicited by monetary reward and loss; it is thought to relate to reward-related neural activity and has been linked to depression in children and adults. In the current study, we examined the stability of FN, and its relationship with depression in adolescents, over 2 years in 45 8- to 13-year-old children. From Time 1 to Time 2, FN in response to monetary loss and in response to monetary gain showed moderate to strong reliability (rs = .64 and .67, respectively); these relationships remained significant even when accounting for related variables. FN also demonstrated high within-session reliability. Moreover, the relationship between a blunted FN and greater depression observed at Time 1 was reproduced at Time 2, and the magnitude of FN at Time 1 predicted depressive symptomatology at Time 2. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that FN and its relationship with depression remain consistent over the course of development, and that FN may prospectively predict later depressive symptomatology. The current results suggest that FN may be suitable as a biomarker of depressive symptoms during adolescence.

The impact of puberty and social anxiety on amygdala activation to faces in adolescence

Adolescence is associated with the onset of puberty, shifts in social and emotional behavior and an increased vulnerability to social anxiety disorder. These transitions coincide with changes in amygdala response to social and affective stimuli. Utilizing an emotional face-matching task, we examined amygdala response to peer-aged neutral and fearful faces in relation to puberty and social anxiety in a sample of 60 adolescent females between the ages of 8 and 15 years. We observed amygdala activation in response to both neutral and fearful faces compared to the control condition but did not observe differential amygdala activation between fearful and neutral faces. Right amygdala activity in response to neutral faces was negatively correlated with puberty and positively correlated with social anxiety, and these effects were statistically independent. Puberty and social anxiety did not relate to amygdala activation in response to fearful faces. These findings suggest that emotional differentiation between fearful and neutral faces may arise during later pubertal development and may result from decreasing sensitivity to neutral faces rather than increasing sensitivity to threatening faces. Furthermore, these findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in social anxiety when examining the neural response to social stimuli in adolescents.

Maternal Depression Is Related to Reduced Error-Related Brain Activity in Child and Adolescent Offspring

Chronic parental depression is associated with an increased likelihood of depression in offspring. One mechanism by which parental depression may increase risk is through physiological or cognitive tendencies in offspring. Error processing has been studied using the error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related potential that occurs around the time someone commits an error, and has previously been shown to be heritable and blunted in depressed individuals. The current study examined the ERN as a potential biomarker of risk in a sample of never-depressed children whose mothers had a history of recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD), a single episode of MDD, or no lifetime history of any mood disorder. Seventy-eight mother–child dyads participated. The average age for children was 13.13 years (SD = 2.07) and 50% were female. Diagnostic interviews and self-report questionnaires were used to assess depression in both mothers and children. A flankers task was used to elicit the ERN and the correct response negativity (CRN) in children. Children of mothers with a history of recurrent MDD exhibited a reduced difference between the ERN and CRN compared to children of mothers with no depression history, even after controlling for children’s current depression symptoms. Furthermore, current maternal depression symptoms related to a smaller difference between ERN and CRN in children. This pattern of findings suggests that blunted neural activity differentiating error from correct responses may be one mechanism by which recurrent maternal depression increases risk for depression in offspring and may be useful biomarker of risk.

Authoritarian Parenting Predicts Reduced Electrocortical Response to Observed Adolescent Offspring Rewards

Abstract Parenting styles are robust predictors of offspring outcomes, yet little is known about their neural underpinnings. In this study, 44 parent-adolescent dyads (Mage of adolescent = 12.9) completed a laboratory guessing task while EEG was continuously recorded. In the task, each pair member received feedback about their own monetary wins and losses and also observed the monetary wins and losses of the other member of the pair. We examined the association between self-reported parenting style and parents’ electrophysiological responses to watching their adolescent winning and losing money, dubbed the observational Reward Positivity (RewP) and observational feedback negativity (FN), respectively. Self-reported authoritarian parenting predicted reductions in parents’ observational RewP but not FN. This predictive relationship remained after adjusting for sex of both participants, parents’ responsiveness to their own wins, and parental psychopathology. ‘Exploratory analyses found that permissive parenting was associated with a blunting of the adolescents’ response to their parents’ losses’. These findings suggest that parents’ rapid neural responses to their child’s successes may relate to the harsh parenting behaviors associated with authoritarian parenting.