Neural sensitivity to social reward predicts links between social behavior and loneliness in youth during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Neural reward network sensitivity in youth is proposed to differentially impact the effects of social environments on social outcomes. The COVID‐19 pandemic provided an opportunity to test this hypothesis within a context of diminished in‐person social interaction. We examined whether neural sensitivity to interactive social reward moderates the relationship between a frequency of interactive or passive social activity and social satisfaction. Survey reports of frequency of interactions with friends, passive social media use, and loneliness and social satisfaction were gathered in 2020 during mandated precautions limiting in‐person contact. A subset of participants (age = 10–17) previously participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examining social‐interactive reward during a simulated peer interaction (survey n = 76; survey + fMRI n = 40). We found evidence of differential response to social context, such that youth with higher neural reward sensitivity showed a negative association between a frequency of interactive connections with friends and a combined loneliness and social dissatisfaction component (LSDC) score, whereas those with lower sensitivity showed the opposite effect. Further, high reward sensitivity was associated with greater LSDC as passive social media use increased, whereas low reward sensitivity showed the opposite. This indicates that youth with greater sensitivity to social‐interactive reward may be more susceptible to negative effects of infrequent contact than their low reward‐sensitive counterparts, who instead maintain social well‐being through passive viewing of social content. These differential outcomes could have implications for supporting youth during times of major social disruption as well as ensuring mental health and well‐being more broadly.

Heightened neural reward responsiveness functions as a plasticity factor moderating the association between childhood emotional abuse and young adult depressive symptoms: Evidence of differential susceptibility.

“…Specifically, the current interaction findings, along with those using functional magnetic resonance imaging-based neural (Dziura et al, 2023;Turpyn et al, 2021) and genetic indicators (Davies et al, 2019;Stocker et al, 2017) of reward sensitivity, seem to support an emerging view that heightened reward sensitivity may be susceptible to both positive and negative environments. Although the mechanism is unclear, some researchers have argued that reward hypersensitivity may itself reflect sensitivity to the environment, thus conferring different outcomes depending on the type of environment (Dziura et al, 2023). Alternatively, heightened RewP probably represents high approach motivation (Proudfit, 2015;Threadgill & Gable, 2016), making individuals more likely to engage in goal-pursuit behaviors, such as seeking social interaction.…”

“…However, due to the lack of approach motivation (Proudfit, 2015; Threadgill & Gable, 2016) or without any trait reward hypersensitivity features (Alloy et al, 2015), the blunted RewP may exhibit the opposite function of the heightened RewP. That is, the blunted RewP is unlikely to be sensitive to the environment, regardless of the type of environment (positive or negative; Dziura et al, 2023). Thus, existing research might misinterpret their blunted RewP × Stress Exposure interactions as diathesis-stress (e.g., Burani et al, 2023; Feurer et al, 2021; Goldstein et al, 2020; Yan et al, 2023), as under the framework of diathesis-stress, the blunted RewP should be vulnerable (or sensitive) to environmental stressors.…”

“…In fact, this is not the first time that reward hypersensitivity has been proposed and considered as a plasticity factor exhibiting susceptibility to the environment on psychiatric symptoms. Some researchers (Dziura et al, 2023; Telzer et al, 2021; Turpyn et al, 2021) suggested that heightened reward sensitivity may itself reflect sensitivity to the environment, thus conferring different outcomes depending on the type of environment. Several recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies provide preliminary evidence that hyper- (but not hypo-) VS sensitivity when anticipating social rewards moderates the association between environmental exposure (e.g., infrequent social contact, deviant peer norms) and psychiatric symptoms (e.g., loneliness, risk-taking behaviors) in a “for better and for worse” manner (Dziura et al, 2023; Telzer et al, 2021; Turpyn et al, 2021).…”