Familial risk for distress and fear disorders and emotional reactivity in adolescence: an event-related potential investigation

Abstract

Background The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential component that is sensitive to the motivational salience of stimuli. Children with a parental history of depression, an indicator of risk, have been found to exhibit an attenuated LPP to emotional stimuli. Research on depressive and anxiety disorders has organized these conditions into two empirical classes: distress and fear disorders. The present study examined whether parental history of distress and fear disorders was associated with the LPP to emotional stimuli in a large sample of adolescent girls. Methods The sample of 550 girls (ages 13.5–15.5) with no lifetime history of depression completed an emotional picture-viewing task and the LPP was measured in response to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant pictures. Parental lifetime history of psychopathology was determined via semi-structured diagnostic interview with a biological parent, and a confirmatory factor analysis was used to model distress and fear dimensions. Results Parental distress risk was associated with an attenuated LPP to all stimuli. In contrast, parental fear risk was associated with an enhanced LPP to unpleasant pictures but was unrelated to the LPP to neutral and pleasant pictures. Furthermore, these results were independent of the adolescent girls’ current depression and anxiety symptoms and pubertal status. Conclusions The present study demonstrates that familial risk for distress and fear disorders may have unique profiles in terms of electrocortical measures of emotional information processing. This study is also one of the first to investigate emotional/motivational processes underlying the distress and fear disorder dimensions.

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies.

“…One caveat to this organization is that panic disorder appears to have features of both fear and distress, and has been found to load on both subfactors (Greene & Eaton, 2016;H. Kim & Eaton, 2015;Nelson et al, 2015;Watson et al, 2012;Wright et al, 2013). Also, OCD is a relatively weak member of the fear cluster and shows some overlap with the thought disorder dimension (Caspi et al, 2014;Chmielewski & Watson, 2008;Watson, Wu, & Cutshall, 2004).…”

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A Dimensional Alternative to Traditional Nosologies

“…For example, Nelson, Perlman, Hajcak, Klein, and Kotov (2015) related neural measures of emotional reactivity to the distress and fear subfactors, and found that the former was associated with blunted neural reactivity to all stimuli, whereas the latter was associated with enhanced reactivity to negative stimuli specifically. Weinberg et al (2015) evaluated links between neural markers of error-processing and symptom components of the internalizing domain, and found that enhanced neural reactivity to errors was specifically associated with the checking component across various disorders.…”

Neural Reactivity to Emotional Stimuli Prospectively Predicts the Impact of a Natural Disaster on Psychiatric Symptoms in Children

“…Cross-sectional research suggests the LPP may measure emotional processing styles that contribute to vulnerability for psychopathology. For example, offspring of parents with fear disorders (i.e., panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and specific phobia) and children with fearful temperament showed enhanced LPPs to unpleasant stimuli (36; 37). In addition, blunted LPPs to emotional faces have been observed in youth at risk for depression based both on parental history of depression and temperament style (37–39).…”

“…For example, offspring of parents with fear disorders (i.e., panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and specific phobia) and children with fearful temperament showed enhanced LPPs to unpleasant stimuli (36; 37). In addition, blunted LPPs to emotional faces have been observed in youth at risk for depression based both on parental history of depression and temperament style (37–39). Importantly, there is evidence that individual differences in processing and coping with emotions contribute to children’s responses to stress (40), suggesting that the magnitude of the LPP may moderate effects of stress on the development of symptoms.…”