Psychobiological Stress Response Profiles in Current and Remitted Depression: A Person-Centered, Multisystem Approach.

Background: A dysregulated stress response, including exaggerated affective reactivity and abnormal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis responsivity, has been implicated in the etiology, maintenance, and relapse of major depressive disorder (MDD). Among adolescents, discordant affective and physiological stress response profiles have been linked to negative affective outcomes and increased risk for psychopathology. Whether these findings extend to adults with varying degree of MDD risk is unclear, as are possible links to various risk factors.

Cognitive Signatures of Depressive and Anhedonic Symptoms and Affective States Using Computational Modeling and Neurocognitive Testing.

Background: Deeper phenotyping may improve our understanding of depression. Because depression is heterogeneous, extracting cognitive signatures associated with severity of depressive symptoms, anhedonia, and affective states is a promising approach.

Methods: Sequential sampling models decomposed behavior from an adaptive approach-avoidance conflict task into computational parameters quantifying latent cognitive signatures.

Large-scale encoding of emotion concepts becomes increasingly similar between individuals from childhood to adolescence.

Humans require a shared conceptualization of others' emotions for adaptive social functioning. A concept is a mental blueprint that gives our brains parameters for predicting what will happen next. Emotion concepts undergo refinement with development, but it is not known whether their neural representations change in parallel.

Investigating the Link Between Depression, Cognition, and Motivation in Late Childhood.

Research has revealed broad cognitive deficits (e.g., memory, learning) in depression, and that motivation may account for this link.