Intergenerational transmission of depression risk: Mothers' neural response to reward and history of depression are associated with daughters' neural response to reward across adolescence.

Abstract

Impaired reward responsiveness, a construct of the RDoC positive valence systems (PVS), prospectively predicts depression onset and may therefore represent an important marker of risk. Neural structures implicated in reward processing undergo substantial change during adolescence, a period of heightened risk for depression, particularly for those with a family history of the disorder. However, it is not clear whether familial transmission of PVS functioning also changes across adolescence, nor whether a family history of depression influences normative development of the PVS. To address these questions, mothers and their adolescent daughters each completed a monetary reward guessing task while an electroencephalogram was recorded (N = 109 dyads). Daughters' pubertal status significantly moderated the association between mothers' and daughters' reward processing in the delta frequency, such that there was a negative association for daughters in early puberty that shifted toward a positive association in later puberty. Furthermore, for never-depressed daughters without a maternal history of depression, more advanced pubertal development was associated with increased reward-related power in the delta frequency, whereas, for daughters with a maternal history of depression, more advanced pubertal development was associated with reduced power in the delta frequency. These data indicate that biomarkers of risk for psychopathology may differ as a function of both familial risk and developmental status. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).