Development of Self-Reported Reward Responsiveness and Inhibitory Control and the Role of Clinical and Neural Predictors.

Objective: Understanding the development of adolescent reward responsiveness and inhibitory control is important as they are implicated in key outcomes, such as depression. However, relatively few studies have examined the self-reported experience of this development longitudinally, and past findings have been mixed. Here, we examined the longitudinal development of self-reported reward responsiveness and inhibitory control in youth, as well as clinical and neural measures as predictors of these longitudinal trajectories.

A Virtual In Vivo Dissection and Analysis of Socioaffective Symptoms Related to Cerebellum-Midbrain Reward Circuitry in Humans.

Emerging research in nonhuman animals implicates cerebellar projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in appetitive behaviors, but these circuits have not been characterized in humans. Here, we mapped cerebello-VTA white matter connectivity in a cohort of men and women using probabilistic tractography on diffusion imaging data from the Human Connectome Project. We uncovered the topographical organization of these connections by separately tracking from parcels of cerebellar lobule VI, crus I/II, vermis, paravermis, and cerebrocerebellum.

Test-retest reliability of the play-or-pass version of the Iowa Gambling Task.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is used to assess decision-making in clinical populations. The original IGT does not disambiguate reward and punishment learning; however, an adaptation of the task, the "play-or-pass" IGT, was developed to better distinguish between reward and punishment learning. We evaluated the test-retest reliability of measures of reward and punishment learning from the play-or-pass IGT and examined associations with self-reported measures of reward/punishment sensitivity and internalizing symptoms.

An Dissection, and Analysis of Socio-Affective Symptoms related to Cerebellum-Midbrain Reward Circuitry in Humans.

Emerging research in non-human animals implicates cerebellar projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in appetitive behaviors, but these circuits have not been characterized in humans. Here, we mapped cerebello-VTA white-matter connectivity in humans using probabilistic tractography on diffusion imaging data from the Human Connectome Project. We uncovered the topographical organization of these connections by separately tracking from parcels of cerebellar lobule VI, crus I/II, vermis, paravermis, and cerebrocerebellum.

Adolescents at risk for depression show increased white matter microstructure with age across diffuse areas of the brain.

Maternal history of depression is a strong predictor of depression in offspring and linked to structural and functional alterations in the developing brain. However, very little work has examined differences in white matter in adolescents at familial risk for depression. In a sample aged 9-14 (n = 117), we used tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) to examine differences in white matter microstructure between adolescents with (n = 42) and without (n = 75) maternal history of depression.

From Classical Methods to Generative Models: Tackling the Unreliability of Neuroscientific Measures in Mental Health Research.

Advances in computational statistics and corresponding shifts in funding initiatives over the past few decades have led to a proliferation of neuroscientific measures being developed in the context of mental health research. Although such measures have undoubtedly deepened our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes associated with various mental health conditions, the clinical utility of such measures remains underwhelming. Recent commentaries point toward the poor reliability of neuroscientific measures to partially explain this lack of clinical translation.

Validation of a novel method of ultraviolet-induced cutaneous inflammation and its associations with anhedonia.

Affective immunology of the skin is a growing area; however, established protocols for measuring individual differences in cutaneous inflammation are lacking. To address this, we present a preliminary validation of Precision Implementation of Minimal Erythema Dose (PI-MED) testing as a method for measuring cutaneous inflammation. PI-MED is a recently adapted protocol, optimized for reproducibility and individual differences research, that uses ultraviolet (UV) light to evoke cutaneous erythema, or inflammatory skin reddening.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Specifically Improves Social Anhedonia Among Adults with Chronic Stress.

This randomized controlled trial examined the effects of mindfulness on anhedonic symptoms in a sample of adults reporting high levels of chronic stress. Meditation-naïve adults ( = 68, age = 32, 62% female) were randomized to either an 8-week group-based MBSR intervention ( = 35), or a waitlist control group ( = 33). We hypothesized that changes in mindfulness would mediate the relationship between condition and changes in anhedonic symptoms.

A missing link in affect regulation: the cerebellum.

The cerebellum is one-third the size of the cerebrum yet holds twice the number of neurons. Historically, its sole function was thought to be in the calibration of smooth movements through the creation and ongoing modification of motor programs. This traditional viewpoint has been challenged by findings showing that cerebellar damage can lead to striking changes in non-motor behavior, including emotional changes.

Subjective arousal and perceived control clarify heterogeneity in inflammatory and affective outcomes.

Only a portion of individuals experiencing chronic stress and associated increases in inflammation go on to develop pathological elevations in mood and anxiety symptoms. Some prevailing models suggest that the outcomes of chronic stress may largely depend on individual differences in perceived control. In the current study, we used this theoretical framework to disambiguate the influence of autonomic arousal and perceived control on inflammatory and psychological outcomes in a large sample of adults from the Midlife in the United States dataset (wave 2; MIDUS-2) (Final N ​= ​1030), and further replicated our approach in a second (MIDUS-Refresher) cohort (Final N ​= ​728).

Enhancing the Psychometric Properties of the Iowa Gambling Task Using Full Generative Modeling.

Poor psychometrics, particularly low test-retest reliability, pose a major challenge for using behavioral tasks in individual differences research. Here, we demonstrate that full generative modeling of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) substantially improves test-retest reliability and may also enhance the IGT's validity for use in characterizing internalizing pathology, compared to the traditional analytic approach. IGT data was collected across two sessions, one month apart.

Evaluating the item-level factor structure of anhedonia.

Background: Anhedonia has long been theorized to be a multidimensional construct, focusing on domains of reward stimuli and temporal relationship to reward. However, little empirical work has directly examined whether there is support for this assertion.

Methods: The study used data from young adults from four independent samples (n = 2098).

From childhood maltreatment to adult inflammation: Evidence for the mediational status of social anxiety and low positive affect.

Prior work has established a robust association between childhood maltreatment and systemic inflammatory activation later in life; however, the mechanisms involved in this process remain incompletely understood. The purpose of this investigation was to examine potential mechanistic roles for social anxiety (SA) symptoms and low positive affect (PA) in the path from childhood maltreatment to elevations in circulating interleukin (IL)-6, a common biomarker of inflammatory activation. In addition, building on prior work establishing linkages between mindful awareness and reductions in systemic inflammation, we examined the potential role of trait mindfulness as a moderator of the relationships among childhood maltreatment, SA, low PA, and IL-6.

Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Adolescent Social Anxiety: A Unique Convergence of Factors.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a debilitating and often chronic psychiatric disorder that typically onsets during early adolescence. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), the current "gold-standard" treatment for SAD, tends to focus on threat- and fear-based systems hypothesized to maintain the disorder. Despite this targeted approach, SAD ranks among the least responsive anxiety disorders to CBT in adolescent samples, with a considerable proportion of individuals still reporting clinically significant symptoms following treatment, suggesting that the CBT-family of interventions may not fully target precipitating or maintaining factors of the disorder.

Reward Circuitry and Motivational Deficits in Social Anxiety Disorder: What Can Be Learned From Mouse Models?

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and serious psychiatric condition that typically emerges during adolescence and persists into adulthood if left untreated. Prevailing interventions focus on modulating threat and arousal systems but produce only modest rates of remission. This gap in efficacy suggests that most mainstream treatment concepts do not sufficiently target core processes involved in the onset and maintenance of SAD.

Precision Implementation of Minimal Erythema Dose (MED) Testing to Assess Individual Variation in Human Inflammatory Response.

Minimal erythema dose (MED) testing is frequently used in clinical settings for determining the smallest amount of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation necessary to produce erythema (inflammatory reddening) on the surface of the skin. In this context, the MED is regarded as a key factor in determining starting doses for UV phototherapy for common skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema. In research settings, MED testing also has potential to be a powerful tool for assessing within- and between-persons variation in inflammatory responses.

Sensitivity shift theory: A developmental model of positive affect and motivational deficits in social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and impairing condition that emerges in early adolescence, confers significant interpersonal disability and often persists into adulthood. Prevailing interventions for socially anxious youth are largely based on cognitive-behavioral models originally developed in adult samples, but produce only modest rates of remission in adolescents. The purposes of this review are to examine plausible explanations for these modest rates of treatment response and to critically evaluate the relevance of developmental mechanisms related to reward circuitry function.

Worth working for: The influence of effort costs on teens' choices during a novel decision making game.

Decision making requires consideration of both the benefits of a given choice and the costs, which can include risk, delay, and effort. Previous research has examined the developmental trajectory of adolescent decision making regarding risk and delay; however, the effects of effort on adolescent decision making remain largely unexplored. In the present study, we pilot tested a novel, developmentally-appropriate task designed to examine developmental differences in the willingness to expend effort during goal pursuit in adolescents (ages 13-16, n = 23) versus young adults (ages 18-23, n = 25).

Reward circuitry activation reflects social preferences in the face of cognitive effort.

Research at the intersection of social neuroscience and cognitive effort is an interesting new area for exploration. There is great potential to broaden our understanding of how social context and cognitive effort processes, currently addressed in disparate literatures, interact with one another. In this paper, we briefly review the literature on cognitive effort, focusing on effort-linked valuation and the gap in the literature regarding cognitive effort in the social domain.

Control and Effort Costs Influence the Motivational Consequences of Choice.

The act of making a choice, apart from any outcomes the choice may yield, has, paradoxically, been linked to both the enhancement and the detriment of intrinsic motivation. Research has implicated two factors in potentially mediating these contradictory effects: the personal control conferred by a choice and the costs associated with a choice. Across four experiments, utilizing a physical effort task disguised as a simple video game, we systematically varied costs across two levels of physical effort requirements (Low-Requirement, High-Requirement) and control over effort costs across three levels of choice (Free-Choice, Restricted-Choice, and No-Choice) to disambiguate how these factors affect the motivational consequences of choosing within an effortful task.