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Abnormal Neural Sensitivity to Monetary Gains Versus Losses Among Adolescents at Risk for Depression

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Abstract

Major depressive disorder aggregates within families, although the mechanisms of transfer across generations are not well understood. In light of converging biological and behavioral evidence that depressive symptoms are associated with impaired reward processing, we examined whether adolescent girls with a parental history of depression would also exhibit abnormal reward sensitivity. We performed a negative mood induction and then recorded the feedback negativity, a neural index of reward processing, while individuals completed a gambling task. High-risk adolescents reported greater sadness following the mood induction compared to low-risk adolescents. Among the high-risk group, sadness was strongly associated with a blunted feedback negativity, even after controlling for baseline mood and trait neuroticism. This suggests that high-risk adolescents are more reactive to negative stimuli, which significantly alter neural sensitivity to monetary gains and losses. The feedback negativity might be used to identify information processing abnormalities in high-risk populations prior to the onset of a major depressive episode.

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Notes

  1. As a point of comparison, we repeated then regression analysis using sadness as a difference score, post-induction minus baseline, rather than covariation. The pattern of results was similar, with sadness change inversely related to FN amplitude across the whole sample at the bivariate level (r = 0.28, p < 0.01) and after adjusting for risk status, neuroticism, and depressive symptoms (β = 0.31, p < 0.01). This association was again stronger among the high-risk group (r = 0.51, p < 0.01) compared to the low-risk group (r = 0.31, p < 0.05), although the difference between the correlation coefficients was less pronounced and the interaction term was not statistically significant (β = 0.11, p = 0.33).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to give a special thanks to the Stony Brook Center for Survey Research, who provided a seed grant in support of the current study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794–2500, USA

    Dan Foti, Daniel N. Klein & Greg Hajcak

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Roman Kotov

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  1. Dan Foti
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  2. Roman Kotov
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  3. Daniel N. Klein
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  4. Greg Hajcak
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Correspondence to Dan Foti.

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Foti, D., Kotov, R., Klein, D.N. et al. Abnormal Neural Sensitivity to Monetary Gains Versus Losses Among Adolescents at Risk for Depression. J Abnorm Child Psychol 39, 913–924 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9503-9

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