Increased Reward-Related Activation in the Ventral Striatum During Stress Exposure Associated With Positive Affect in the Daily Life of Young Adults With a Family History of Depression. Preliminary Findings

Abstract

Background: Being the offspring of a parent with major depression disorder (MDD) is a strong predictor for developing MDD. Blunted striatal responses to reward were identified in individuals with MDD and in asymptomatic individuals with family history of depression (FHD). Stress is a major etiological factor for MDD and was also reported to reduce the striatal responses to reward. The stress-reward interactions in FHD individuals has not been explored yet. Extending neuroimaging results into daily-life experience, self-reported ambulatory measures of positive affect (PA) were shown to be associated with striatal activation during reward processing. A reduction of self-reported PA in daily life is consistently reported in individuals with current MDD. Here, we aimed to test (1) whether increased family risk of depression is associated with blunted neural and self-reported reward responses. (2) the stress-reward interactions at the neural level. We expected a stronger reduction of reward-related striatal activation under stress in FHD individuals compared to HC. (3) the associations between fMRI and daily life self-reported data on reward and stress experiences, with a specific interest in the striatum as a crucial region for reward processing.Method: Participants were 16 asymptomatic young adults with FHD and 16 controls (HC). They performed the Fribourg Reward Task with and without stress induction, using event-related fMRI. We conducted whole-brain analyses comparing the two groups for the main effect of reward (rewarded > not-rewarded) during reward feedback in control (no-stress) and stress conditions. Beta weights extracted from significant activation in this contrast were correlated with self-reported PA and negative affect (NA) assessed over 1 week.Results: Under stress induction, the reward-related activation in the ventral striatum (VS) was higher in the FHD group than in the HC group. Unexpectedly, we did not find significant group differences in the self-reported daily life PA measures. During stress induction, VS reward-related activation correlated positively with PA in both groups and negatively with NA in the HC group.Conclusion: As expected, our results indicate that increased family risk of depression was associated with specific striatum reactivity to reward in a stress condition, and support previous findings that ventral striatal reward-related response is associated with PA. A new unexpected finding is the negative association between NA and reward-related ventral striatal activation in the HC group.

Structural and Functional Brain Alterations in Populations with Familial Risk for Depression: A Narrative Review

“…Similar to MDD, compared to their low-risk counterparts, high-risk adolescents, 5,65-67 children, 68-70 and adults 71 showed reduced striatal response while expecting a reward. While obtaining a reward, high-risk adolescents showed reduced OFC activity, 72 high-risk adults showed reduced ventral striatum activity, 73 and high-risk children showed no difference in activation 74 . Thus, lower striatal and OFC activity during reward anticipation and receipt might be related to vulnerability to depression and associated with clinically observed low levels of positive affect, motivation, and pleasure in high-risk individuals 75,76 .…”

Proteomic Insights Into Susceptibility and Resistance to Chronic-Stress-Induced Depression or Anxiety in the Rat Striatum

“…Converging evidence suggests that the striatum as one of the important neural substrates is disturbed in the reward circuitry of depression and anxiety by stress ( Admon et al, 2015 ; Ullmann et al, 2020 ; Martin-Soelch et al, 2021 ). In the present work, the striatal site-specific proteomic signatures of the three stressed and Ctrl groups were comparatively determined through the use of an iTRAQ-based quantitation strategy.…”

“…The striatum may be a structure in which stress and reward processing interact ( Admon et al, 2015 ; Ullmann et al, 2020 ). Specifically, stress, on the other hand, reduces the activation of the striatum in response to reward and elicits robust dopamine release in the striatum on the other ( Martin-Soelch et al, 2021 ). Hence, blunted striatal response to reward has been considered as a potential endo-phenotype associated with depression and anxiety ( Luking et al, 2016 ).…”

Distinct neurofunctional alterations during motivational and hedonic processing of natural and monetary rewards in depression – a neuroimaging meta-analysis

“…Original case-control fMRI studies examining monetary - (47), (48), (49), (50), (51), (39), (52), (53), (54), (55), (56), (41), (57), (58), (59), (60), (37) and natural - (12), (61), (62), (63), (64), (65), (66), (67), (68), (41) reward processing in depression were extracted and suitable studies from the reference lists of review articles were additionally included. The literature was screened based on titles and abstracts returned by search results of the search terms: “functional magnetic resonance imaging OR fMRI” AND “depression OR major depressive disorder OR unipolar depression OR sub-clinical depression OR at-risk of depression” in combination with either “monetary reward” OR “monetary incentive delay” OR “natural reward” OR “social reward”.…”