Social anhedonia and medial prefrontal response to mutual liking in late adolescents

Abstract

Anhedonia, a cardinal symptom of depression defined as difficulty experiencing pleasure, is also a possible endophenotype and prognostic factor for the development of depression. The onset of depression typically occurs during adolescence, a period in which social status and affiliation are especially salient. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a region implicated in reward, self-relevant processing, and social cognition, exhibits altered function in adults with anhedonia, but its association with adolescent anhedonia has yet to be investigated. We examined neural response to social reward in 27 late adolescents, 18–21 years old, who varied in social anhedonia. Participants reported their social anhedonia, completed ratings of photos of unfamiliar peers, and underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging task involving feedback about being liked. Adolescents with higher social anhedonia exhibited greater mPFC activation in response to mutual liking (i.e., being liked by someone they also liked) relative to received liking (i.e., being liked by someone whom they did not like). This association held after controlling for severity of current depressive symptoms, although depressive severity was also associated with greater mPFC response. Adolescents with higher levels of social anhedonia also had stronger positive connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and the mPFC during mutual versus received liking. These results, the first on the pathophysiology of adolescent anhedonia, support altered neural reward-circuit response to social reward in young people with social anhedonia.

Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks

“…Although such experimental manipulations cannot be conducted in human research, the paradigm advanced here could be implemented longitudinally to investigate whether individual differences in the valuation system's social sensitivity are important determinants or consequences of one's ability and motivation to affiliate with group members and achieve status. Understanding the causal mechanisms underlying such individual differences in humans could have implications for clinical conditions such as depression and developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders, in which diminished interpersonal sensitivity, affiliative motivation, and social interaction have been linked to atypical valuation system structure and function (43,44). More broadly, our findings are consistent with prior research showing that other aspects of network membership may also relate to the structure and function of valuation and social cognition systems.…”

Blunted cardiovascular reactivity during social reward anticipation in subclinical depression

“…Finally, we applied another-potentially more active-kind of social reward by proposing subscription to an internet site that allowed for exchange of information with other successful students, in contrast to entering one's name in the public "best list" in the previous study. Taking both studies together, results confirm the hypothesis of impaired social-reward function in depression (Forbes, 2009;Forbes and Dahl, 2012) and complement the sparse literature about altered neural responses during social reward consumption (Davey et al, 2011;Healey et al, 2014;Olino et al, 2015) and about impaired reward-learning during social reward anticipation (Pechtel et al, 2013).…”

“…Together with the studies on neural responses to social reward consumption (Davey et al, 2011;Healey et al, 2014;Olino et al, 2015) and on behavioral response during social reward anticipation (Pechtel et al, 2013), the present study suggests that social rewards might not be as rewarding for depressed individuals as they are for nondepressed individuals, leading to reduced effort mobilization, reduced reward-learning, and altered neural responses.…”

“…With respect to social rewards in particular, three neuro-imaging studies have shown altered responsiveness in reward-related brain areas of depressed and high-risk individuals during the consummatory phase (Davey et al, 2011;Healey et al, 2014;Olino et al, 2015).…”

Future Research Directions in the Positive Valence Systems: Measurement, Development, and Implications for Youth Unipolar Depression

“…However, there may be questions about the specific processes that underlie simple passive viewing. Currently a number of investigators have focused on providing faux peer feedback using fMRI (Davey, Allen, Harrison, Dwyer, & Yücel, 2010; Healey, Morgan, Musselman, Olino, & Forbes, 2014; Olino, Silk, Osterritter, & Forbes, in press; Silk et al, 2014) or ERP (Kujawa, Arfer, Klein, & Proudfit, 2014) methods. The pattern of neural responses demonstrated in these tasks is similar to that seen using monetary incentives.…”