Effects of stress-induced inflammation on reward processing in healthy young women

Abstract

Background-Anhedonia, or loss of interest or pleasure, is a feature of depression and transdiagnostic construct in psychopathology. Theory and compelling evidence from preclinical models implicates stress-induced inflammation as a psychobiological pathway to anhedonic behavior; however, this pathway has not been tested in human models. Further, although anhedonia may reflect dysregulation in multiple dimensions of reward, the extent to which stressinduced inflammation alters these dimensions is unclear. Thus, the current experimental study used a standardized laboratory stressor task to elicit an inflammatory response and evaluate effects of stress-induced inflammation on multiple behavioral indices of reward processing. Methods-Healthy young women (age 18-25) completed behavioral reward tasks assessing reward learning, motivation, and sensitivity and were randomized to undergo an acute psychosocial stressor (n = 37) or a nostress active control (n = 17). Tasks were re-administered 90-120min post-stress to coincide with the peak of the stress-induced inflammatory response. Blood samples were collected for assessment of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) at baseline and 90 and 120 min post stressor.

Aging as a Context for the Role of Inflammation in Depressive Symptoms

“…In the current study, the negative association between CRP and anhedonia was somewhat unexpected given previous studies showing that inflammation can attenuate positive affect and psychological processes associated with reward ( 42 – 44 , 84 , 85 ). Yet, mild immune activation with acute laboratory stress or a vaccine can increase reward learning and motivation in the short-term ( 86 , 87 ). The complexities of reward processes, which are comprised of learning, motivation, and sensitivity, must also be considered when thinking about how reward neurocircuitry relates to self-reported symptoms of anhedonia.…”

Acute stress impairs reward learning in men

“…At a first sight, however, some of the extant literature may seem equivocal, possibly due to critical methodological differences related to stress operationalization (Porcelli & Delgado, 2017). A significant number of studies have investigated the effects of stress on learning using different paradigms, such as ACUTE STRESS AND REWARD LEARNING 26 the cold pressor test (Byrne et al, 2019;Ehlers & Todd, 2017;Glienke, Wolf, & Bellebaum, 2015;Lighthall et al, 2013;Otto et al, 2013;Paul, Bellebaum, Ghio, Suchan, & Wolf, 2019) or the Trier social stress test (Boyle, Stanton, Eisenberger, Seeman, & Bower, 2019;Kruse et al, 2018;Petzold et al, 2010;Radenbach et al, 2015), in which acute stress is induced before the learning task. In these paradigms, stress induction precedes any learning processes, thus the stress-induced emotional state may be less concurrent with the cognitive processes that operate during the task.…”

Psychological measures of stress and biomarkers of inflammation, aging, and endothelial dysfunction in breast cancer survivors on aromatase inhibitors

“…In addition to the observational studies that show a strong association between psychosocial stress and inflammation, experimental studies demonstrate a bidirectional cause-effect relationship between stress and inflammation. Intriguingly, acute laboratory stress paradigms show that stress can cause an inflammatory response 57 , 58 , and inflammation can also provoke depressive symptoms 59 , 60 .…”