Event-related potentials during the ultimatum game in people with symptoms of depression and/or social anxiety.

Depression and social anxiety are common disorders that have a profound impact on social functioning. The need for studying the neural substrates of social interactions in mental disorders using interactive tasks has been emphasized. The field of neuroeconomics, which combines neuroscience techniques and behavioral economics multiplayer tasks such as the Ultimatum Game (UG), can contribute in this direction. We assessed emotions, behavior, and Event-Related Potentials in participants with depression and/or social anxiety symptoms (MD/SA, n = 63, 57 females) and healthy controls (n = 72, 67 females), while they played the UG. In this task, participants received fair, mid-value, and unfair offers from other players. Mixed linear models were implemented to assess trial level changes in neural activity. The MD/SA group reported higher levels of sadness in response to mid-value and unfair offers compared to controls. In controls, the Medial Frontal Negativity associated with fair offers increased over time, while this dynamic was not observed in the MD/SA group. The MD/SA group showed a decreased P3/LPP in all offers, compared to controls. These results indicate an enhanced negative emotional response to unfairness in the MD/SA group. Neural results reveal a blunted response over time to positive social stimuli in the MD/SA group. Moreover, between-group differences in P3/LPP may relate to a reduced saliency of offers and/or to a reduced availability of resources for processing incoming stimuli in the MD/SA group. Findings may shed light into the neural substrates of social difficulties in these disorders.

Longitudinal changes in depression and anxiety during COVID-19 crisis in Uruguay.

Longitudinal studies have reported decreased mental health symptoms throughout the COVID-19 crisis, while others have found improvements or no changes across time. However, most research was carried out in developed countries, with a high incidence of COVID-19 and, in several cases, mandatory lockdowns. Considering that Uruguay (a developing country) had a low COVID-19 incidence at the moment of this study and has implemented a mild lockdown, we aimed to evaluate the effect of time and mobility (using Google mobility data) on symptoms of anxiety and depression. A longitudinal panel study with six repeated measures was carried out to evaluate depressive (BDI-II) and anxiety (STAI-S) symptoms during the pandemic. A decline in symptoms of anxiety and depression was found across time. Interestingly, this effect was modulated by age; a greater difference in the symptomatology between age groups was found at the beginning of the measurements than at the end, with the youngest reporting the most severe symptoms. Finally, we found that depressive symptoms decreased as mobility increased. Overall, our findings indicate an improvement in mental health as quarantine passed and mobility increased but following a different pattern depending on age. Monitoring these trajectories is imperative moving forward, especially in vulnerable groups. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03460-w.

Social avoidance in depression: A study using a social decision-making task.

Depression significantly affects interpersonal functioning. Social avoidance may play an important role in depression, limiting opportunities and social skills acquisition, contributing to the maintenance of social difficulties. In the last few years, the need for studying social interactions using interactive tasks has been highlighted. This study investigated social avoidance in unmedicated depressed (n = 26) and matched healthy control (n = 26) participants, using a novel computerized social decision-making task (the TEAM task). In this task, participants choose between a social option (playing in a team with a coplayer) and an individual option (playing alone). Although the social option is more profitable from a material point of view, it can also be challenging because of social comparison and guilt feelings for failing the team. It was found that the higher the rank of the coplayer, the stronger the negative emotions (shame, guilt) reported by participants and the more they opted for the individual option. Depressed participants reported significantly less positive (happiness) and more negative (shame, guilt, disappointment) feelings regarding the task. Importantly, depressed participants chose the individual option significantly more often than controls, which led to lower gains in this group. Furthermore, as the task progressed, controls selected the individual option less often, whereas depressed participants selected the individual option more often. Our findings illustrate the importance of social avoidance in depression and how this behavior can lead to negative consequences. They also highlight the role of social comparison and guilt-related processes in underlying social avoidance in depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).