Examination of the Neural Basis of Psychoticlike Experiences in Adolescence During Reward Processing

Abstract

The findings are consistent with evidence implicating alterations in prefrontal and striatal function during reward processing in the etiology of psychosis. Given the nature of this nonclinical sample this may reflect a combination of aberrant salience yielding abnormal experiences and a compensatory cognitive control mechanism necessary to contextualize them.

Examination of the neural basis of psychotic-like experiences in adolescence during processing of emotional faces

“…www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ conclusions In a previous study from the same IMAGEN sample, we provided evidence for a consistent increase in prefrontal activation during reward feedback, in the high PLEs group, between the ages of 14 and 19, which was attributed to a compensatory cognitive control mechanism 37 . The current study revealed functional alterations in parahippocampal/amygdala and insula responses during the perception of emotional faces in adolescents with high PLEs between the ages of 14 and 19 suggests a potential 'aberrant' neurodevelopmental trajectory for critical limbic areas.…”

“…www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ Aberrant activation of the amygdala during a face recognition is probably one of neuroimaging hallmarks of psychosis. In our study, we identified a large cluster centred in the right parahippocampal gyrus, including the amygdalae, hippocampal, and parahippocampal areas, which demonstrated a peak activation at a right parahippocampal region, [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46], which demonstrated significantly lower activation for the high PLEs group at the age of 19. A study employing a similar IMAGEN sample as ours revealed that subjects with PLEs demonstrated, among other findings, increased hippocampus/amygdala activation during processing of neutral faces, compared to controls 16 .…”

Neural correlates of reward anticipation in 2000 children aged 9-10 years: relation to psychotic-like experiences and depressive symptoms

“…Thus, as age 10-11, an endorsement of psychotic like experiences items on interview is less likely to be representative of mental disorder than a similar endorsement in adolescence (26), and the persistence of psychotic-like experiences over time has been shown to be associated with a higher risk of mental disorder than isolated measurements (24; 25). Previous studies have suggested links between reward processing (and other fMRI task) activation and psychopathology in children and adolescents than the current sample (11)(27; 12). This leads to the following prediction: children who persist in endorsing psychotic-like experiences at multiple time-points over the coming years will be more prone to develop schizophrenia spectrum or depressive illnesses than other short members, and this persistence of psychopathology, and emergence of new psychopathology in follow-ups, may be associated with (or possibly predicted by) concomitant deficits in brain activation in the MID task.…”

“…Depression was measured with the K-SADS, the gold standard in this age group for diagnostic purposes; admittedly, in terms of a continuous measures of severity of depression, or of anhedonia, additional assessments might be more sensitive to individual differences in participants. Given that in middle adolescence, and in adulthood, striatal reward anticipation has been shown to be deficient in patients with schizophrenia and clinical or subthreshold depression (4)(5)(6)(11)(12), it appears that clear associations between psychopathology and brain reward anticipation signatures only emerge during adolescence. The ABCD study provides a platform through which this prediction can be tested, as the study protocol is that repeat measures of fMRI and psychopathology will be acquired in the coming years.…”

“…Whilst anhedonia was associated with reduced ventral striatal activation, accentuated in the presence of both anhedonia and low mood, the presence of low mood without anhedonia was associated with normal ventral striatal reward anticipation. A recent analysis of IMAGEN data showed that 149 individuals with high levels of psychotic like experiences at age 19 had reduced reward related brain activity at age 14 on the MID (12). Taken together, these findings indicate that reduced reward anticipation on the MID task is associated with depression and schizophrenia in adults, and is related to anhedonia, clinical depression status and possibly depression or psychotic-like symptom pathogenesis in mid-adolescence.…”