Accelerated neurodevelopment of reward anticipation processing in adolescent girls with depression

Abstract

Objective To test the hypothesis that depression is associated with differential neurodevelopment of reward circuitry in adolescence. Methods Adolescent girls (N=183, 58 with MDD in early or late adolescence) underwent MRI scans from ages 16-20 (1-4 scans/participant, 477 scans total) and completed a card-guessing fMRI task with monetary rewards. Mixed-effect models tested the effect of age and the moderating effect of MDD on whole-brain regional activation during reward anticipation. Results Eighty of 414 regions showed age effects (pFDR<0.05), consisting primarily of increasing activation with increasing age. Most significant regions were in dorsal attention, salience, and somatomotor networks, and also included the bilateral putamen, pallidum, and right nucleus accumbens. MDD moderated age effects in 40 regions (pFDR<0.05), including the right putamen, medial orbitofrontal cortex, and amygdala, and regions in control and dorsal attention networks. MDD x linear and quadratic age effects were negative, suggesting that MDD was associated with accelerated neurodevelopment. Conclusions Theories of reward processing's contribution to adolescent risk for depression focus primarily on core reward regions, yet a host of regions beyond these continue to develop during late adolescence. Findings demonstrate differing regional patterns of age-related changes in relation to MDD in girls, suggesting that depression involves disruption of a wide range of regions during reward anticipation processing across adolescence. Childhood and adolescent MDD is associated with accelerated neurodevelopment of attention and cognitive control regions during reward anticipation processing, which may have consequences both for cognitive function and the emergence of reward-system-specific disruptions.