Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T08:38:32.872Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The interplay of childhood maltreatment and maternal depression in relation to the reward positivity in youth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2021

Jennifer H. Suor*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Maria Granros
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Alison E. Calentino
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Department of Psychology, The Stony Brook University, Stony Book, NY, USA
K. Luan Phan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Katie L. Burkhouse
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
*
Author for Correspondence: Jennifer H. Suor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1601 W. Taylor Street, Chicago, IL, 60612, USA; E-mail: jesuor@uic.edu

Abstract

Guided by developmental psychopathology and dual-risk frameworks, the present study examined the interplay between childhood maltreatment and maternal major depression history in relation to neural reward responsiveness in youth. The sample consisted of 96 youth (ages 9–16; M = 12.29 years, SD = 2.20; 68.8% female) drawn from a large metropolitan city. Youth were recruited based on whether their mothers had a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) and were categorized into two groups: youth with mothers with a history of MDD (high risk; HR; n = 56) and youth with mothers with no history of psychiatric disorders (low risk; LR; n = 40). The reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential component, was utilized to measure reward responsiveness and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire measured childhood maltreatment. We found a significant two-way interaction between childhood maltreatment and risk group in relation to RewP. Simple slope analysis revealed that in the HR group, greater childhood maltreatment was significantly associated with reduced RewP. The relationship between childhood maltreatment and RewP was not significant among the LR youth. The present findings demonstrate that the association between childhood maltreatment and blunted reward responsiveness is dependent on whether offspring have mothers with histories of MDD.

Type
Regular Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Becker, M. P., Nitsch, A. M., Miltner, W. H., & Straube, T. (2014). A single-trial estimation of feedback-related negativity and its relation to BOLD responses in a time-estimation task. Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 30053012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, D. P., & Fink, L. (1998). Child trauma questionnaire: A retrospective self-report. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Bernstein, D. P., Fink, L., Handelsman, L., Foote, J., Lovejoy, M., Wenzel, K., … Ruggiero, J. (1994). Initial reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect. American Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 11321136.Google ScholarPubMed
Birn, R. M., Roeber, B. J., & Pollak, S. D. (2017). Early childhood stress exposure, reward pathways, and adult decision making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 1354913554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boecker-Schlier, R., Holz, N. E., Buchmann, A. F., Blomeyer, D., Plichta, M. M., Jennen-Steinmetz, C., … Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2016). Interaction between COMT val158met polymorphism and childhood adversity affects reward processing in adulthood. NeuroImage, 132, 556570.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brooker, R. J., Bates, J. E., Buss, K. A., Canen, M. J., Dennis-Tiwary, T. A., Gatzke-Kopp, L. M., … Schmidt, L. A. (2019). Conducting event-related potential (ERP) research with young children. Journal of Psychophysiology, 34, 137158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buckner, J. C., Mezzacappa, E., & Beardslee, W. R. (2003). Characteristics of resilient youths living in poverty: The role of self-regulatory processes. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 139162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burani, K., Klawohn, J., Levinson, A. R., Klein, D. N., Nelson, B. D., & Hajcak, G. (2021). Neural response to rewards, stress and sleep interact to prospectively predict depressive symptoms in adolescent girls. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 50, 131140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlson, J. M., Foti, D., Mujica-Parodi, L. R., Harmon-Jones, E., & Hajcak, G. (2011). Ventral striatal and medial prefrontal BOLD activation is correlated with reward-related electrocortical activity: A combined ERP and fMRI study. NeuroImage, 57, 16081616.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cecil, C. A. M., Viding, E., Fearon, P., Glaser, D., & McCrory, E. J. (2017). Disentangling the mental health impact of childhood abuse and neglect. Child Abuse & Neglect, 63, 106119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cicchetti, D., & Rogosch, F. A. (1996). Equifinality and multifinality in developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 8, 597600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicchetti, D., Rogosch, F., Lynch, M., & Holt, K. (1993). Resilience in maltreated children: Processes leading to adaptive outcome. Development and Psychopathology, 5, 629647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corral-Frías, N. S., Nikolova, Y. S., Michalski, L. J., Baranger, D. A., Hariri, A. R., & Bogdan, R. (2015). Stress-related anhedonia is associated with ventral striatum reactivity to reward and transdiagnostic psychiatric symptomatology. Psychological Medicine, 45, 26052617.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dackis, M., Rogosch, F., Oshri, A., & Cicchetti, D. (2012). The role of limbic system irritability in linking history of childhood maltreatment and psychiatric outcomes in low-income, high-risk women: Moderation by FK506 binding protein 5 haplotype. Development and Psychopathology, 24, 12371252.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dennison, M. J., Rosen, M. L., Sambrook, K. A., Jenness, J. L., Sheridan, M. A., & McLaughlin, K. A. (2019). Differential associations of distinct forms of childhood adversity with neurobehavioral measures of reward processing: A developmental pathway to depression. Child Development, 90, e96e113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dillon, D. G., Holmes, A. J., Birk, J. L., Brooks, N., Lyons-Ruth, K., & Pizzagalli, D. A. (2009). Childhood adversity is associated with left basal ganglia dysfunction during reward anticipation in adulthood. Biological Psychiatry, 66, 206213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Edwards, V. J., Holden, G. W., Felitti, V. J., & Anda, R. F. (2003). Relationship between multiple forms of childhood maltreatment and adult mental health in community respondents: Results from the adverse childhood experiences study. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 14531460.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
First, M. B., Williams, J. B. W., Karg, R. S., & Spitzer, R. L. (2015). Structured clinical interview for DSM-5—research version (SCID-5 for DSM-5, research version; SCID-5-RV). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Forbes, E. E., Shaw, D. S., & Dahl, R. E. (2007). Alterations in reward-related decision making in boys with recent and future depression. Biological Psychiatry, 61, 633639.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frye, A. A., & Garber, J. (2005). The relations among maternal depression, maternal criticism, and adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33, 111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gabrieli, J. D., Ghosh, S. S., & Whitfield-Gabrieli, S. (2015). Prediction as a humanitarian and pragmatic contribution from human cognitive neuroscience. Neuron, 85, 1126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldstein, B. L., Kessel, E. M., Kujawa, A., Finsaas, M. C., Davila, J., Hajcak, G., & Klein, D. N. (2020). Stressful life events moderate the effect of neural reward responsiveness in childhood on depressive symptoms in adolescence. Psychological Medicine, 50, 15481555.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodman, S. H., Rouse, M. H., Connell, A. M., Broth, M. R., Hall, C. M., & Heyward, D. (2011). Maternal depression and child psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 14, 127.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gotlib, I. H., & Joormann, J. (2010). Cognition and depression: Current status and future directions. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6, 285312.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hanson, J. L., Albert, D., Iselin, A. M. R., Carre, J. M., Dodge, K. A., & Hariri, A. R. (2016). Cumulative stress in childhood is associated with blunted reward-related brain activity in adulthood. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11, 405412.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hanson, J. L., Hariri, A. R., & Williamson, D. E. (2015). Blunted ventral striatum development in adolescence reflects emotional neglect and predicts depressive symptoms. Biological Psychiatry, 78, 598605.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hentges, R. F., Graham, S. A., Plamondon, A., Tough, S., & Madigan, S. (2021). Bidirectional associations between maternal depression, hostile parenting, and early child emotional problems: Findings from the All Our Families cohort. Journal of Affective Disorders, 287, 397404.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holroyd, C. B., & Coles, M. G. H. (2002). The neural basis of human error processing: Reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review, 109, 679709.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holroyd, C. B., Pakzad-Vaezi, K. L., & Krigolson, O. E. (2008). The feedback correct-related positivity: Sensitivity of the event-related brain potential to unexpected positive feedback. Psychophysiology, 45, 688697.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Insel, T., Cuthbert, B., Garvey, M., Heinssen, R., Pine, D. S., Quinn, K., … Wang, P. (2010). Research domain criteria (RDoc): Toward a new classification framework for research on mental disorders. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 167, 748751.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, S. J., Sunday, S. R., Labruna, V., Pelcovitz, D., & Salzinger, S. (2009). Psychiatric disorders of parents of physically abused adolescents. Journal of Family Violence, 24, 273281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, J., Birmaher, B., Axelson, D., Perepletchikova, F., Brent, D., & Ryan, N. (2016). The KSADS-PL DSM-5. Baltimore, MD: Kennedy Krieger Institute.Google Scholar
Kujawa, A., & Burkhouse, K. L. (2017). Vulnerability to depression in youth: Advances from affective neuroscience. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2, 2837.Google ScholarPubMed
Kujawa, A., Hajcak, G., & Klein, D. N. (2019). Reduced reward responsiveness moderates the effect of maternal depression on depressive symptoms in offspring: Evidence across levels of analysis. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 60, 8290.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujawa, A., Klein, D. N., Pegg, S., & Weinberg, A. (2020). Developmental trajectories to reduced activation of positive valence systems: A review of biological and environmental contributions. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 43, 100791.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujawa, A., Proudfit, G. H., & Klein, D. N. (2014). Neural reactivity to rewards and losses in offspring of mothers and fathers with histories of depressive and anxiety disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 123, 287297.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujawa, A., Proudfit, G. H., Laptook, R., & Klein, D. N. (2015). Early parenting moderates the association between parental depression and neural reactivity to rewards and losses in offspring. Clinical Psychological Science, 3, 503515.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kujawa, A., Smith, E., Luhmann, C., & Hajcak, G. (2013). The feedback negativity reflects favorable compared to nonfavorable outcomes based on global, not local, alternatives. Psychophysiology, 50, 134138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Y., Kaaya, S., Chai, J., McCoy, D. C., Surkan, P. J., Black, M. M., … Smith-Fawzi, M. C. (2017). Maternal depressive symptoms and early childhood cognitive development: A meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 47, 680689.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lovejoy, M. C., Graczyk, P. A., O'Hare, E., & Neuman, G. (2000). Maternal depression and parenting behavior: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 20, 561592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luby, J., Allen, N., Estabrook, R., Pine, D. S., Rogers, C., Krogh-Jespersen, S., … Wakschlag, L. (2019). Mapping infant neurodevelopmental precursors of mental disorders: How synthetic cohorts & computational approaches can be used to enhance prediction of early childhood psychopathology. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 123, 103484.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luking, K. R., Nelson, B. D., Infantolino, Z. P., Sauder, C. L., & Hajcak, G. (2017). Internal consistency of functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography measures of reward in late childhood and early adolescence. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2, 289297.Google ScholarPubMed
Luking, K. R., Pagliaccio, D., Luby, J. L., & Barch, D. M. (2016). Depression risk predicts blunted neural responses to gains and enhanced responses to losses in healthy children. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 55, 328337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mackin, D. M., Kotov, R., Perlman, G., Nelson, B. D., Goldstein, B. L., Hajcak, G., & Klein, D. N. (2019). Reward processing and future life stress: Stress generation pathway to depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 128, 305314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matijasevich, A., Murray, J., Cooper, P. J., Anselmi, L., Barros, A. J., Barros, F. C., & Santos, I. S. (2015). Trajectories of maternal depression and offspring psychopathology at 6 years: 2004 Pelotas cohort study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 174, 424431.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McLaughlin, K. A., Sheridan, M. A., & Lambert, H. K. (2014). Childhood adversity and neural development: Deprivation and threat as distinct dimensions of early experience. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 47, 578591.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McLaughlin, K. A., Weissman, D., & Bitrán, D. (2019). Childhood adversity and neural development: A systematic review. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 1, 277312.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michl-Petzing, L. C., Handley, E. D., Sturge-Apple, M., Cicchetti, D., & Toth, S. L. (2019). Re-examining the “cycle of abuse”: Parenting determinants among previously maltreated, low-income mothers. Journal of Family Psychology, 33, 742752.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, G. A., Gratton, G., & Yee, C. M. (1988). Generalized implementation of an eye movement correction procedure. Psychophysiology, 25, 241243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. E., Lachman, M. E., Chen, E., Gruenewald, T. L., Karlamangla, A. S., & Seeman, T. E. (2011). Pathways to resilience: Maternal nurturance as a buffer against the effects of childhood poverty on metabolic syndrome at midlife. Psychological Science, 22, 15911599.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monroe, S. M., & Simons, A. D. (1991). Diathesis-stress theories in the context of life stress research: Implications for the depressive disorders. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 406425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moser, J. S., Fisher, M., Hicks, B. M., Zucker, R. A., & Durbin, C. E. (2018). Feedback-related neurophysiology in children and their parents: Developmental differences, familial transmission, and relationship to error-monitoring. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 132, 338352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nikolova, Y. S., Bogdan, R., Brigidi, B. D., & Hariri, A. R. (2012). Ventral striatum reactivity to reward and recent life stress interact to predict positive affect. Biological Psychiatry, 72, 157163.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Novick, A. M., Levandowski, M. L., Laumann, L. E., Philip, N. S., Price, L. H., & Tyrka, A. R. (2018). The effects of early life stress on reward processing. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 101, 80103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olino, T. M., McMakin, D. L., Morgan, J. K., Silk, J. S., Birmaher, B., Axelson, D. A., … Forbes, E. E. (2014). Reduced reward anticipation in youth at high-risk for unipolar depression: A preliminary study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 5564.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pawlby, S., Hay, D., Sharp, D., Waters, C. S., & Pariante, C. M. (2011). Antenatal depression and offspring psychopathology: The influence of childhood maltreatment. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 199, 106112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pegg, S., Ethridge, P., Shields, G. S., Slavich, G. M., Weinberg, A., & Kujawa, A. (2019). Blunted social reward responsiveness moderates the effect of lifetime social stress exposure on depressive symptoms. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 13, 178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Proudfit, G. H. (2015). The reward positivity: From basic research on reward to a biomarker for depression. Psychophysiology, 52, 449459.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Proudfit, G. H., Bress, J. N., Foti, D., Kujawa, A., & Klein, D. N. (2015). Depression and event-related potentials: Emotional disengagement and reward insensitivity. Current Opinion in Psychology, 4, 110113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radloff, L. S. (1977). The CES-D scale: A self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawal, A., Collishaw, S., Thapar, A., & Rice, F. (2013). “The risks of playing it safe”: A prospective longitudinal study of response to reward in the adolescent offspring of depressed parents. Psychological Medicine, 43, 2738.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romens, S. E., Casement, M. D., McAloon, R., Keenan, K., Hipwell, A. E., Guyer, A. E., & Forbes, E. E. (2015). Adolescent girls’ neural response to reward mediates the relation between childhood financial disadvantage and depression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 56, 11771184.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sameroff, A. J. (1983). Developmental systems: Contexts and evolution. In Mussen, P. H. (Series Ed.) & Kessen, W. (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: formerly Carmichael's manual of child psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 237294). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Sellers, R., Harold, G. T., Elam, K., Rhoades, K. A., Potter, R., Mars, B., … Collishaw, S. (2014). Maternal depression and co-occurring antisocial behaviour: Testing maternal hostility and warmth as mediators of risk for offspring psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55, 112120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shankman, S. A., & Gorka, S. M. (2015). Psychopathology research in the RDoc era: Unanswered questions and the importance of the psychophysiological unit of analysis. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 98, 330337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sharp, C., Kim, S., Herman, L., Pane, H., Reuter, T., & Strathearn, L. (2014). Major depression in mothers predicts reduced ventral striatum activation in adolescent female offspring with and without depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 123, 298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sheridan, M. A., & McLaughlin, K. A. (2014). Dimensions of early experience and neural development: Deprivation and threat. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 580585.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silverman, M. H., Krueger, R. F., Iacono, W. G., Malone, S. M., Hunt, R. H., & Thomas, K. M. (2014). Quantifying familial influences on brain activation during the monetary incentive delay task: An adolescent monozygotic twin study. Biological Psychology, 103, 714.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Suor, J. H., Sturge-Apple, M. L., Davies, P. T., Cicchetti, D., & Manning, L. G. (2015). Tracing differential pathways of risk: Associations among family adversity, cortisol, and cognitive functioning in childhood. Child Development, 86, 11421158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sweeney, S., & MacBeth, A. (2016). The effects of paternal depression on child and adolescent outcomes: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 205, 4459.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1992). Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyrka, A. R., Price, L. H., Gelernter, J., Schepker, C., Anderson, G. M., & Carpenter, L. L. (2009). Interaction of childhood maltreatment with the corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor gene: Effects on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity. Biological Psychiatry, 66, 681685.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau. (2021). Child Maltreatment 2019. Available from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/research-data-technology/statistics-research/child-maltreatmentGoogle Scholar
Vidal-Ribas, P., Benson, B., Vitale, A. D., Keren, H., Harrewijn, A., Fox, N. A., … Stringaris, A. (2019). Bidirectional associations between stress and reward processing in children and adolescents: A longitudinal neuroimaging study. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 4, 893901.Google ScholarPubMed
Walker, E. A., Gelfand, A., Katon, W. J., Koss, M. P., Von Korff, M., Bernstein, D., & Russo, J. (1999). Adult health status of women with histories of childhood abuse and neglect. The American Journal of Medicine, 107, 332339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Warmingham, J. M., Handley, E. D., Rogosch, F. A., Manly, J. T., & Cicchetti, D. (2019). Identifying maltreatment subgroups with patterns of maltreatment subtype and chronicity: A latent class analysis approach. Child Abuse & Neglect, 87, 2839.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wen, D. J., Poh, J. S., Ni, S. N., Chong, Y. S., Chen, H., Kwek, K., … Qiu, A. (2017). Influences of prenatal and postnatal maternal depression on amygdala volume and microstructure in young children. Translational Psychiatry, 7, e1103.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wiggins, J. L., Schwartz, K. T., Kryza-Lacombe, M., Spechler, P. A., Blankenship, S. L., & Dougherty, L. R. (2017). Neural reactivity to reward in school-age offspring of depressed mothers. Journal of Affective Disorders, 214, 8188.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, S., & Durbin, C. E. (2010). Effects of paternal depression on fathers’ parenting behaviors: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 167180.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zuckerman, M. (1999). Diathesis-stress models. In Zuckerman, M. (Ed.), Vulnerability to psychopathology: A biosocial model (pp. 323). Washington, DC, USA: American Psychological Association.CrossRefGoogle Scholar