Abstract
IntroductionUnderstanding the emotional responsivity style and neurocognitive profiles of depression‐related processes in at‐risk youth may be helpful in revealing those most likely to develop affective disorders. However, the multiplicity of biopsychosocial risk factors makes it difficult to disentangle unique and combined effects at a neurobiological level.MethodsIn a population‐derived sample of 56 older adolescents (aged 17–20), we adopted partial least squares regression and correlation models to explore the relationships between multivariate biopsychosocial risks for later depression, emotional response style, and fMRI activity, to rejecting and inclusive social feedback.ResultsBehaviorally, higher depressive risk was associated with both reduced negative affect following negative social feedback and reduced positive affect following positive social feedback. In response to both cues of rejection and inclusion, we observed a general neural pattern of increased cingulate, temporal, and striatal activity in the brain. Secondly, in response to rejection only, we observed a pattern of activity in ostensibly executive control‐ and emotion regulation‐related brain regions encompassing fronto‐parietal brain networks including the angular gyrus.ConclusionThe results suggest that risk for depression is associated with a pervasive emotional insensitivity in the face of positive and negative social feedback.
Highlights
Understanding the emotional responsivity style and neurocognitive profiles of depression-related processes in at-risk youth may be helpful in revealing those most likely to develop affective disorders
We investigated the relationship between a cluster of theoretically derived and empirically validated biopsychosocial depression risk variables and behavior and neural activations in a social evaluation
TA B L E 3 Activated brain regions associated with the Negative > Neutral Contrast in the partial least squares (PLS) model including the set of biopsychosocial risk variables
Summary
With an estimated 300 million people suffering from depression, major depressive disorder (MDD) is the leading cause of disability globally (WHO, 2017). One preliminary study has investigated the psychosocial reward of social acceptance, showing that high-risk youth, defined as those with a parental history of depression, exhibited reduced responses to acceptance in the caudate, insula, and ACC and increased activity in fronto-temporal regions relative to low- risk controls (Olino et al, 2015) This is in line with monetary reward tasks, which have generally shown a reduced striatal response to reward anticipation and feedback in those who have experienced early adversity (Goff et al, 2013; Hanson et al, 2016; Mehta et al, 2010). Examination of patterns of neural activity using FMRI during the social evaluation task will enable us to investigate these different possibilities
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