Neural response to rewards moderates the within-person association between daily positive events and positive affect during a period of stress exposure.

Stress and neural responses to reward can interact to predict psychopathology, but the mechanisms of this interaction are unclear. One possibility is that the strength of neural responses to reward can affect the ability to maintain positive affect during stress. In this study, 105 participants completed a monetary reward task to elicit the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential sensitive to rewards. Subsequently, during a stressful period, participants reported on their affect nine times a day and on daily positive and negative events for 10 days. Even during heightened stress, experiencing more positive events was associated with increased positive affect. The RewP significantly moderated this association: Individuals with a larger RewP reported greater increases in positive affect when they experienced more positive events, relative to individuals with a smaller RewP. A blunted RewP might contribute to stress susceptibility by affecting how much individuals engage in positive emotion regulation during stress.

Chronic stress in peer relationships moderates the association between pubertal development and neural response to emotional faces in adolescence.

Adolescence is a period of heightened risk for multiple forms of psychopathology, partly due to greater exposure to interpersonal stress. One way that interpersonal stress may increase risk for psychopathology is by altering the normative development of neural systems that support socio-affective processing. The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential component that reflects sustained attention to motivationally-salient information and is a promising marker of risk for stress-related psychopathology. However, it is not clear how the LPP to socio-affective information changes across adolescence, nor whether exposure to stress with peers interferes with normative developmental differences in the LPP to socio-affective content during this period. In 92 adolescent girls (10-19 years old), we assessed the LPP to task-irrelevant emotional and neutral faces, as well as behavioural measures of interference following the presentation of these faces. Adolescents at more advanced stages of puberty showed a smaller LPP to emotional faces, but adolescents exposed to greater peer stress exhibited a larger LPP to these stimuli. Additionally, for girls exposed to lower levels of peer stress, more advanced pubertal development was associated with a smaller LPP to emotional faces, whereas for girls exposed to higher levels of peer stress, the association between pubertal development and the LPP to emotional faces was not significant. Neither stress nor pubertal stage was significantly associated with behavioural measures. Combined, these data suggest that one pathway through which stress exposure increases risk for psychopathology during adolescence is by interfering with the normative development of socio-affective processing.

Parsing patterns of reward responsiveness: Initial evidence from latent profile analysis.

Variation in reward responsiveness has been linked to psychopathology. Reward responsiveness is a complex phenomenon that encompasses different temporal dimensions (i.e., reward anticipation or consumption) that can be measured using multiple appetitive stimuli. Furthermore, distinct measures, such as neural and self-report measures, reflect related but distinct aspects of reward responsiveness. To understand reward responsiveness more comprehensively and better identify deficits in reward responsiveness implicated in psychopathology, we examined ways multiple measures of reward responsiveness jointly contribute to distinct psychological problems by using latent profile analysis. Specifically, we identified three profiles of reward responsiveness among 139 female participants based on their neural responses to money, food, social acceptance, and erotic images and self-reported responsiveness to reward anticipation and consumption. Profile 1 (n = 30) exhibited blunted neural responses to social rewards and erotic images, low self-reported reward responsiveness, but average neural responses to monetary and food rewards. Profile 2 (n = 71) showed elevated neural response to monetary rewards, average neural responses to other stimuli, and average self-reported reward responsiveness. Profile 3 (n = 38) showed more variable neural responses to reward (e.g., hypersensitivity to erotic images, hyposensitivity to monetary rewards), and high self-reported reward responsiveness. These profiles were differentially associated with variables generally linked to aberrations in reward responsiveness. For example, Profile 1 was most strongly associated with anhedonic depression and social dysfunction, whereas Profile 3 was associated with risk-taking behaviors. These preliminary findings may help to elucidate ways different measures of reward responsiveness manifest within and across individuals and identify specific vulnerabilities for distinct psychological problems.

Blunted neural response to errors prospectively predicts increased symptoms of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Symptoms of depression have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly due to increases in both chronic and episodic stress exposure. Yet these increases are being driven by a subset of people, leading to questions of what factors make some people more vulnerable. Individual differences in neural response to errors may confer vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology. However, it is unclear whether neural response to errors prospectively predicts depressive symptoms within the context of chronic and episodic stress exposure. Prior to the pandemic, neural response to errors, measured by the error-related negativity (ERN), and depression symptoms were collected from 105 young adults. Beginning in March 2020 and ending in August 2020, we collected symptoms of depression and exposure to pandemic-related episodic stressors at eight time points. Using multilevel models, we tested whether the ERN predicted depression symptoms across the first 6 months of the pandemic, a period of chronic stress. We also examined whether pandemic-related episodic stressors moderated the association between the ERN and depression symptoms. A blunted ERN predicted increased depression symptoms across the early part of the pandemic, even after adjusting for baseline depression symptoms. Moreover, episodic stress interacted with the ERN to predict concurrent symptoms of depression: For individuals exposed to greater episodic stress, a blunted ERN was associated with increased depressive symptoms at each timepoint during the pandemic. These findings indicate that blunted neural response to errors may enhance risk for depression symptoms under conditions of real-world chronic and episodic stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Risk factors for the intergenerational transmission of depression in women and girls: Understanding neural correlates of major depressive disorder and the role of early-onset maternal depression.

Deficits in neural reward processing have been implicated in the etiology of depression and have been observed in high-risk individuals. However, depression is a heterogeneous disorder, and not all depressed individuals exhibit blunted neural reward response, suggesting the need to examine more specific depression phenotypes. Early-onset depression, a well-defined phenotype, has been associated with greater intergenerational transmission of depression and appears more closely linked to neural reward processing deficits. The present study examined whether a maternal history of early-onset depression was associated with neural reward response among mothers and their daughters. Mothers with and without a history of depression, as well as their biological, adolescent daughters (N = 109 dyads), completed a monetary reward guessing task while electroencephalogram was collected. Analyses focused on the Reward Positivity (RewP), an event-related potential following reward receipt. Adjusting for current depressive symptoms, maternal early-onset depression was associated with a blunted RewP in the mothers and a numerically smaller RewP in their never-depressed, adolescent daughters. Maternal adult-onset depression was not statistically associated with a blunted RewP in mothers or daughters. Thus, a blunted RewP appears to be a trait-like vulnerability marker for depression that emerges before depression onset and relates to more specific depression phenotypes (e.g., early-onset depression). These findings have implications for early identification of individuals at risk of depression and for developing more targeted interventions.

All the Pringle ladies: Neural and behavioral responses to high-calorie food rewards in young adult women.

Reward processing is vital for learning and survival, and can be indexed using the Reward Positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) component that is larger for rewards than losses. Prior work suggests that heightened motivation to obtain reward, as well as greater reward value, is associated with an enhanced RewP. However, the extent to which internal and external factors modulate neural responses to rewards, and whether such neural responses motivate reward-seeking behavior, remains unclear. The present study investigated whether the degree to which a reward is salient to an individual's current motivational state modulates the RewP, and whether the RewP predicts motivated behaviors, in a sample of 133 women. To elicit the RewP, participants completed a forced-choice food reward guessing task. Data were also collected on food-related behaviors (i.e., type of food chosen, consumption of the food reward) and motivational salience factors (i.e., self-reported hunger, time since last meal, and subjective "liking" of food reward). Results showed that hungrier participants displayed an enhanced RewP compared to less hungry individuals. Further, self-reported snack liking interacted with RewP magnitude to predict behavior, such that when participants reported low levels of snack liking, those with a smaller RewP were more likely to consume their snacks than those with a larger RewP. Our data suggest that food-related motivational state may increase neural sensitivity to food reward in young women, and that neural markers of reward sensitivity might interact with subjective reward liking to predict real-world eating behavior.

Associations between different facets of anhedonia and neural response to monetary, social, and food reward in emerging adults.

Anhedonia is present in diverse psychiatric disorders and has been linked to reduced neural responses to reward. However, most studies of anhedonia have used monetary reward, making it unclear whether previously-observed deficits represent broad domain-general impairments, or whether associations with anhedonia might vary across incentive types. The present study (N = 120) investigated associations between multiple measures of self-reported anhedonia and reward responsiveness and the reward positivity (RewP), a neural index of reward processing, following monetary, social, and food reward. Greater social anhedonia was associated with a smaller RewP following positive social feedback, whereas reduced consummatory pleasure was associated with a smaller RewP following food reward. Associations among both self-report and neural measures of reward sensitivity were generally modest. Our findings suggest that neither anhedonia nor neural reward sensitivity are unidimensional constructs, and that category-specific reward deficits might better capture specific problems in hedonic functioning.

Neural response to rewarding social feedback in never-depressed adolescent girls and their mothers with remitted depression: Associations with multiple risk indices.

Prevention of depression requires a clear understanding of etiology. Previous studies have identified reduced neural responses to monetary reward as a risk factor for depression, but social reward processing may be particularly relevant to depression. This study investigated associations between neural responses to social reward and three well-established risk factors for depression: personal history, family history, and interpersonal stress. We examined the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential sensitive to rewarding feedback, in a sample of 85 women with and without remitted depression and their never-depressed adolescent daughters. In never-depressed daughters, maternal history of depression predicted a blunted social RewP, but interpersonal stress did not. In the mothers, greater interpersonal stress predicted a blunted RewP, but personal depression history was not significant. Combined, these data suggest that personal history, family history, and interpersonal stress may converge on social reward sensitivity, which may advance future research to understand the development of depression. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Associations between lifetime stress exposure and the error-related negativity (ERN) differ based on stressor characteristics and exposure timing in young adults.

Life stress increases risk for multiple forms of psychopathology, in part by altering neural processes involved in performance monitoring. However, the ways in which these stress-cognition effects are influenced by the specific timing and types of life stressors experienced remains poorly understood. To address this gap, we examined how different social-psychological characteristics and developmental timing of stressors are related to the error-related negativity (ERN), a negative-going deflection in the event-related potential (ERP) waveform that is observed from 0 to 100 ms following error commission. A sample of 203 emerging adults performed an ERN-eliciting arrow flanker task and completed an interview-based measure of lifetime stress exposure. Adjusting for stress severity during other developmental periods, there was a small-to-medium effect of stress on performance monitoring, such that more severe total stress exposure, as well as more severe social-evaluative stress in particular, experienced during early adolescence significantly predicted an enhanced ERN. These results suggest that early adolescence may be a sensitive developmental period during which stress exposure may result in lasting adaptations to neural networks implicated in performance monitoring.

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

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).

Authors' reply to the commentary on "Establishing norms for error-related brain activity during the arrow Flanker task among young adults".

In their commentary on our article, "Establishing norms for error-related brain activity during the arrow Flanker task among young adults" (Imburgio et al., 2020), Clayson and colleagues (2021) voiced their concerns about our development of norms for an event-related potential measure of error monitoring, the error-related negativity (ERN). The central flaw in their commentary is the idea that because we don't know all the factors that can affect the ERN, it should not be normed. We respond to this idea, while also reiterating points made in our original manuscript: a) at present, the reported norms are not intended to be used for individual clinical assessment and b) our norms should be considered specific to the procedures (i.e., recording and processing parameters) and task used (i.e., arrow Flanker). Contrary to Clayson and colleagues' claims, we believe that information about the distribution of the ERN (i.e., our norms) in a large sample representative of those used in much of the ERN literature (i.e., unselected young adults) will be useful to the field and that this information stands to increase, not decrease, understanding of the ERN.

Hunger games: Associations between core eating disorder symptoms and responses to rejection by peers during competition.

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with eating disorder (ED) symptoms are sensitive to social threat and report maladaptive interpersonal styles that may contribute to and exacerbate negative evaluation from others. Research in this area has relied primarily on self-report. The current study examined associations between behavioral responses to social threat and core ED symptoms using a behavioral paradigm. Based on previous findings that individuals with binge-eating report being more reactive and confrontational, whereas individuals with dietary restriction tend to be more submissive and avoidant of conflict, we hypothesized that binge eating would be associated with a greater tendency to retaliate against rejection perpetrators, whereas dietary restriction would be associated with a lower tendency to retaliate when rejected. METHOD: Undergraduate women (N = 132) completed a self-report measure of ED symptoms and participated in an online "Survivor"-type game in which they voted to either accept or reject computerized coplayers, while also receiving acceptance or rejection feedback from others. RESULTS: Neither ED symptom was associated with how often participants retaliated against coplayers who rejected them. However, dietary restriction was related to more rejection votes overall (i.e., the tendency to reject others regardless of how others voted). DISCUSSION: Findings suggest that individuals with dietary restriction may rely on a maladaptive defensive strategy aimed at pre-empting rejection, or alternatively, have difficulty shifting from habitual self-isolating behavior that results from over-involvement with restricting symptoms. Interventions targeting hypersensitivity to social threat or interpersonal flexibility may help reduce interpersonal stress and mitigate its impact on restricting symptoms.

Comparing the effects of different methodological decisions on the error-related negativity and its association with behaviour and gender.

The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related potential (ERP) component that is widely used to study human performance monitoring. However, substantial methodological differences exist across studies and it is unclear to what extent these differences may impact the reliability and replicability of observed effects. The current study used multiple common methodological approaches to ERN measurement on the same dataset in order to clarify the impact of these choices on the component's measured amplitude, psychometric properties, and association with individual differences, specifically behaviour and gender. In a sample of 263 adults, we quantified the ERN using different reference schemes (mastoid and average), baseline correction periods (-100 to 0, -200 to 0, and -500 to -300 ms), amplitude measures (mean, peak, and peak-to-peak), difference scores (subtraction and residual scores), and electrode site scorings (single-electrode and region of interest). This resulted in 72 distinct processing streams and estimates of the ERN. We found that data processing choices affect not just the measured amplitude of the ERN (range = -12.60-1.38 µV), but also measures of internal consistency (α range = 0.49-0.77) and test-retest reliability (r range = 0.40-0.71). Moreover, these different combinations of methods affected the strength of associations between the ERN and post-error slowing, as well as the magnitude and direction of gender effects on the ERN. Together, these results illustrate the importance of considering methodological influences on ERN measurement. Future studies comparing the effects of different methodological choices on ERPs and their psychometric properties are needed.

The error-related negativity (ERN) moderates the association between interpersonal stress and anxiety symptoms six months later.

Anxiety disorders are often preceded by interpersonal stress; however, most individuals who experience stress do not develop anxiety, making it difficult to predict who is most susceptible to stress. One proposed trans-diagnostic neural risk marker for anxiety is the error-related negativity (ERN), a negative deflection in the event-related potential waveform occurring within 100 ms of error commission. The present study sought to investigate whether interpersonal stress experienced over the course of a year interacts with ERN magnitude to prospectively predict anxiety symptoms. A sample of 57 emerging adults performed an arrow flanker task to elicit the ERN at the start of the academic school year (time one). Toward the end of the academic year (time two), participants reported on past-year interpersonal stress and anxiety symptoms. Stress interacted with ERN magnitude to predict anxiety symptoms, whereby, for individuals with an enhanced ERN at time one, greater interpersonal stress over the course of a year was significantly associated with increased anxiety symptoms at time two, even controlling for anxiety symptoms at time one. These findings suggest that enhanced performance monitoring may render individuals more susceptible to the adverse effects of interpersonal stress, thereby increasing risk for heightened anxiety.

Establishing norms for error-related brain activity during the arrow Flanker task among young adults.

Psychological assessments typically rely on self-report and behavioral measures. Augmenting these with neurophysiological measures of the construct in question may increase the accuracy and predictive power of these assessments. Moreover, thinking about neurophysiological measures from an assessment perspective may facilitate under-utilized research approaches (e.g., brain-based recruitment of participants). However, the lack of normative data for most neurophysiological measures has prevented the comparison of individual responses to the general population, precluding these approaches. The current work examines the distributions of two event-related potentials (ERPs) commonly used in individual differences research: the error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe). Across three lab sites, 800 unselected participants between the ages of 18 and 30 performed the arrow version of a Flanker task while EEG was recorded. Percentile scores and distributions for ERPs on error trials, correct trials, and the difference (ΔERN, ΔPe; error minus correct) at Fz, Cz and Pz are reported. The 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile values for the ΔERN at Cz were -2.37 â€‹µV, -5.41 â€‹µV, and -8.65 â€‹µV, respectively. The same values for ΔPe at Cz were 7.51 â€‹µV, 11.18 â€‹µV, and 15.55 â€‹µV. Females displayed significantly larger ΔPe magnitudes and smaller ΔERN magnitudes than males. Additionally, normative data for behavioral performance (accuracy, post-error slowing, and reaction time) on the Flanker task is reported. Results provide a means by which ERN and Pe amplitudes of young adults elicited by the arrow Flanker task can be benchmarked, facilitating the classification of neural responses as 'large,' 'medium,' or 'small'. The ability to classify responses in this manner is a necessary step towards expanded use of these measures in assessment and research settings. These norms may not apply to ERPs elicited by other tasks, and future work should establish similar norms using other tasks.

Punishment has a persistent effect on error-related brain activity in highly anxious individuals twenty-four hours after conditioning.

The ability to detect and respond to errors, and to subsequently recruit cognitive control to remediate those errors, is critical to successful adaptation in a changing environment. However, there is also evidence that, for anxious individuals, this error signal is enhanced, highlighting affective and motivational influences on error monitoring. These individual differences arise as a function of both genetic influences and learning experiences. In this study, we examined punishment-based modulation of the error-related negativity (ERN) in high and low anxious individuals across two days. Twenty-two low- and 25 high-anxious participants performed a Flanker task in a standard and punishment condition in three phases (Day one: acquisition and extinction 1, Day two: extinction 2). During the acquisition phase, errors in one condition were punished by a loud noise. This was followed by an immediate extinction phase (extinction 1), during which errors were no longer punished, and an identical extinction phase 24 h later (extinction 2). Only high anxious individuals showed increased ERN amplitudes in the punishment compared to the standard condition. This effect was not modulated by phase and was observed across acquisition and both extinction phases, such that anxious individuals appeared not to learn that the threat value of formerly-punished errors had changed in the course of the experiment. These data suggest that environmental factors (i.e., punishment) can have a persistent effect on the magnitude of the ERN, particularly for anxious individuals. This may point to a pathogenic mechanism linking learning experiences with the development of overactive error-monitoring in anxiety.

Overprotective/authoritarian maternal parenting is associated with an enhanced error-related negativity (ERN) in emerging adult females.

Error monitoring is crucial for survival and adaptation, and can be indexed by the error-related negativity (ERN), a fronto-centrally located negative deflection in the event-related potential (ERP) waveform that differentiates erroneous from correct responses within 100 ms of a response. The ERN is seen as an early neural signal indicating the need to adjust performance and increase executive control. Previous findings indicate that punishing errors increases ERN magnitude, and that punitive parenting predicts an enhanced ERN in children. If punitive parenting can in fact sensitize children to error commission over the long term, an enhanced ERN should be seen in adults who experienced harsh parenting as children. The present study thus sought to establish whether punitive parenting is associated with an enhanced ERN in emerging adulthood. A sample of 70 emerging adult females reported on their mothers' and fathers' parenting styles separately and performed a flanker task to elicit the ERN. Higher reported overprotective/authoritarian maternal behavior was associated with an enhanced ERN. These results provide further support for the hypothesis that punitive parenting may lead to long-term sensitization of neural networks involved in performance monitoring.