Adolescents’ neural response to social reward and real-world emotional closeness and positive affect

Abstract

Feeling emotionally close to others during social interactions is a ubiquitous and meaningful experience that can elicit positive affect. The present study integrates functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to investigate whether neural response to social reward (1) is related to the experience of emotional closeness and (2) moderates the association between emotional closeness and positive affect during and following social interactions. In this study, 34 typically developing adolescents (ages 14-18 years) completed a social-reward fMRI task, a monetary-reward fMRI task, and a 2-week EMA protocol regarding their social and affective experiences. Adolescents with greater right posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction (pSTS/TPJ) response to social reward reported greater mean momentary emotional closeness. Neural response to social reward in the right pSTS/TPJ moderated how strongly momentary emotional closeness was associated with both concurrent positive affect and future peak happiness, but in different ways. Although emotional closeness had a significant positive association with concurrent positive affect among adolescents at both high and low right pSTS/TPJ response based on a follow-up simple slopes test, this association was stronger for adolescents with low right pSTS/TPJ response. In contrast, emotional closeness had a significant positive association with future peak happiness among adolescents with high right pSTS/TPJ response, but not among those with low right pSTS/TPJ response. These findings demonstrate the importance of neural response to social reward in key social processing regions for everyday experiences of emotional closeness and positive affect in the context of social interactions.

Associations Between Adolescents’ Social Re-orientation Toward Peers Over Caregivers and Neural Response to Teenage Faces

“…Specifically, youth who were closer to their peers than their parents (regardless of their age) showed greater activation to happy faces, and less activation to fearful faces, in the TPJ. This finding is consistent with past work indicating that 14- to 18-year-olds who reported greater emotional closeness with their peers showed heightened TPJ response to social reward (Flores et al, 2018). Happy faces are generally considered to be rewarding social cues, whereas fearful faces may be aversive or socially threatening.…”

Neural Dynamic Responses of Monetary and Social Reward Processes in Adolescents

“…Adolescence is an essential developmental period characterized by remarkable changes in physical, brain structural domains and hormonal levels, and these changes may further affect adolescents' functional responsiveness and even behaviors (Steinberg, 2005;Blakemore and Choudhury, 2006;Blakemore, 2008;Casey et al, 2008Casey et al, , 2011Burnett et al, 2011;Luking et al, 2019;Poon et al, 2019). Rewards can enhance an individual's motivation, excite positive emotion, optimize the allocation of attention resources and reinforce individual behaviors (Guyer et al, 2006;Delgado, 2007;Bar-Haim et al, 2009;Beck et al, 2010;Helfinstein et al, 2011;Bhanji and Delgado, 2014;Kujawa et al, 2015;Flores et al, 2018). Based on the dual-system theory, the reward system and cognitive control system interact and jointly influence the dynamic changes in rewardrelated behaviors during individual development (Steinberg, 2008;Galvan, 2010;Shulman et al, 2016;McKewen et al, 2019).…”

Cognitive remediation for severe mental illness: state of the field and future directions

“…Low motivation is a cardinal feature across severe mental illnesses and a robust predictor of engagement with psychotherapies. Examination of recruitment and retention statistics in cognitive remediation studies reveals a pattern of difficulty with engagement that is similar to issues faced in other psychotherapies, with attrition rates as high as 50% and low adherence to homework.…”