Neurophysiological Processing of Emotion in Children of Mothers with a History of Depression: the Moderating Role of Preschool Persistent Irritability

Abstract

Research on emotion-processing biases in offspring of depressed parents has produced a variety of findings. Child persistent irritability may be a useful clinical feature that demarcates subgroups of offspring with distinct patterns of emotion processing. The present study examined whether early persistent irritability moderated the relationship between maternal lifetime history of a depressive disorder and appetitive- and aversive-emotion processing in 338 never-depressed pre-adolescent children (43.8% female). When children were 3, mothers were interviewed about children’s persistent irritability. Six years later, EEG was recorded while children completed a task in which the late positive potential (LPP), a neural index of emotional reactivity, was measured in response to appetitive, aversive, and neutral images. At both assessments, mothers were interviewed about their own psychopathology. Among offspring of depressed mothers, children characterized by high levels of early persistent irritability showed an enhanced LPP to appetitive and aversive compared to neutral images (i.e., ΔLPP), whereas children with low levels of early irritability showed attenuated ΔLPPs. In offspring of mothers with no history of depression, there was no association between irritability and emotion processing. Findings suggest that persistent irritability influences the pattern of emotion-processing aberrations in offspring of depressed mothers.

The Neurodevelopmental Basis of Early Childhood Disruptive Behavior: Irritable and Callous Phenotypes as Exemplars

“…Thus, the studies described below are a first step toward rigorous establishment of neural disruptions underlying early irritability and callous behaviors. Accruing evidence supports the utility of this framework, by deploying developmentally-sensitive neuroscientific tools, including fNIRS, eye tracking, EEG/ERP, and developmentally-modified MRI and fMRI methods (87, 89-91). This work finds meaningful parallels between early life and later correlates of irritability and callousness, which informs developmental perspectives ( 1c ) (92, 93).…”

Emotional and cognitive reactivity: Validating a multilevel modeling approach to daily diary data.

“…Several limitations of the current study suggest avenues for future research. First, the current study yielded support for convergent validity between our MLM-DD measures and conventional questionnaire measures of ER and CR; however, future research should also focus on the convergence of these methods with behavioral measures (e.g., Dichter, Tomarken, Shelton, & Sutton, 2004; Rottenberg, Gross, & Gotlib, 2005), mood-induction methods (e.g., Ingram & Ritter, 2000), physiological measures (e.g., Guinjoan, Bernabó, & Cardinali, 1995; Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross, & Gotlib, 2002), and even EEG-based assessments (e.g., Fitzgerald et al, 2018; Kessel et al, 2017). Second, the current evidence of construct validity is somewhat preliminary.…”

Dynamic measures of emotional and cognitive reactivity in college students.

“…Several limitations of the current study suggest avenues for future research. First, the current study provided evidence of convergent validity between the BYB measures and self-report measures of ER and CR; however, additional research is needed to demonstrate convergence with behavioral (e.g., Dichter, Tomarken, Shelton, & Sutton, 2004; Rottenberg, Gross, & Gotlib, 2005), induction (e.g., Ingram & Ritter, 2000), EEG (e.g., Kessel et al, 2017), and physiological (e.g., Guinjoan, Bernabó, & Cardinali, 1995; Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross, & Gotlib, 2002) measures. Convergence of the BYB with daily diary assessments also warrants investigation.…”