The prevalence of depression increases substantially during adolescence. Several predictors of major depressive disorder have been established, but their predictive power is limited. In the current study, the feedback negativity (FN), an event-related potential component elicited by feedback indicating monetary gain versus loss, was recorded in 68 never-depressed adolescent girls. Over the following 2 years, 24% of participants developed a major depressive episode (MDE); illness onset was predicted by blunted FN at initial evaluation. Lower FN amplitude predicted more depressive symptoms during the follow-up period, even after controlling for neuroticism and depressive symptoms at baseline. This is the first prospective study to demonstrate a link between a neural measure of reward sensitivity and the first onset of an MDE. The current results suggest that low reward sensitivity may be an important factor in the development of depression.

Depression is a major public health concern, and the period from late childhood through early adolescence is a critical time in the development of depressive symptoms. In adults, depression and depressive symptoms are associated with a reduction in the feedback negativity (FN), an ERP component elicited by feedback indicating rewards versus losses. The current study sought to extend these findings to a sample of 64 children aged 8 to 13, and to examine developmental differences in the FN. Consistent with previous work in adults, higher depressive symptom scores were associated with a blunted FN across the sample. When responses to losses and gains were examined separately, only reduction in the response to monetary gain was associated with increased depressive symptoms. In the current study, the vast majority of children were pre-pubertal, and the FN was unrelated to both age and pubertal development. The FN may be an ideal biomarker for studying changes in reward sensitivity and depression that emerge as children transition through puberty.

Rewards are integral to learning associations that aid in survival. The feedback negativity (FN), an event-related potential that differentiates outcomes indicating monetary losses versus gains, has recently emerged as a possible neural measure of reward processing. If this view is correct, then the FN should correlate with measures of reward sensitivity in other domains, although few studies have investigated this question. In the current study, 46 participants completed a self-report measure of reward responsiveness, a signal detection task that generated a behavioral measure of reward sensitivity, and a gambling task that elicited an FN. Consistent with the view that the FN reflects reward-related neural activity, a larger FN correlated with increased behavioral and self-report measures of sensitivity to reward.

Feedback negativity (FN) is an event-related potential elicited by monetary reward and loss; it is thought to relate to reward-related neural activity and has been linked to depression in children and adults. In the current study, we examined the stability of FN, and its relationship with depression in adolescents, over 2 years in 45 8- to 13-year-old children. From Time 1 to Time 2, FN in response to monetary loss and in response to monetary gain showed moderate to strong reliability (rs = .64 and .67, respectively); these relationships remained significant even when accounting for related variables. FN also demonstrated high within-session reliability. Moreover, the relationship between a blunted FN and greater depression observed at Time 1 was reproduced at Time 2, and the magnitude of FN at Time 1 predicted depressive symptomatology at Time 2. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that FN and its relationship with depression remain consistent over the course of development, and that FN may prospectively predict later depressive symptomatology. The current results suggest that FN may be suitable as a biomarker of depressive symptoms during adolescence.

The current study, which was a reanalysis of previous data, focused on the error-related negativity (ERN)-an event-related potential (ERP) associated with error monitoring-and the feedback negativity (FN)-an ERP associated with reward processing. Two objectives motivated this study: first, to illustrate the relationship between the ERN and anxious symptoms, and the relationship between the FN and depressive symptoms; second, to explore whether the ERN and the FN relate uniquely to anxiety and depression, respectively, in children. EEG was collected from twenty-five 11- to 13-year-old participants (12 female; 23 Caucasian, 1 Asian, 1 of Caucasian and Hispanic ethnicity) during tasks designed to elicit an ERN and an FN. Participants and a parent completed questionnaires assessing the participant's anxious and depressive symptomatology. Increasing anxiety was related to a larger ERN, and increasing depression was related to a smaller FN. Further analysis demonstrated that these relationships remained significant when controlling for the contribution of other variables; that is, the ERN continued to predict anxiety when controlling for the FN and depression, and the FN continued to predict depression when controlling for the ERN and anxiety. Thus, in late childhood and early adolescence, the ERN and the FN appear to relate uniquely to anxious and depressive symptoms, respectively. Although this research is still in early stages, the ERN and the FN have the potential to inform trajectories of risk for anxiety and depression, and could be utilized in clinical settings as cost- and labor-efficient neural biomarkers.