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ObjectiveIdentifying neural correlates of response to psychological treatment may inform targets for interventions designed to treat psychiatric disorders. This study examined the extent to which baseline functioning in reward circuitry is associated with response to psychotherapy in youths with anxiety disorders.MethodsA randomized clinical trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy compared with supportive therapy was conducted in youths with anxiety disorders. Before treatment, 72 youths (9-14 years old) with anxiety disorders and 37 group-matched healthy comparison youths completed a monetary reward functional MRI task. Treatment response was defined categorically as at least a 35% reduction in diagnostician-rated anxiety severity from pre- to posttreatment assessment. Pretreatment neural activation in the striatum and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during monetary wins relative to losses was examined in relation to treatment response.ResultsResponders, nonresponders, and healthy youths differed significantly in mPFC activation to rewards versus losses at baseline. Youths with anxiety exhibited higher mPFC activity relative to healthy youths, although this may have been driven by differences in depressive symptoms. Planned comparisons between treatment responders (N=48) and nonresponders (N=24) also revealed greater pretreatment neural activation in a cluster encompassing the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and nucleus accumbens among responders.ConclusionsStriatal activation to reward receipt may not differentiate youths with anxiety from healthy youths. However, higher striatal responsivity to rewards may allow youths with anxiety to improve during treatment, potentially through greater engagement in therapy. Function in reward circuitry may guide development of treatments for youths with anxiety.

This study investigated the association between maternal affective expression during laboratory-based interaction tasks and adolescents' experience of positive affect (PA) in natural settings. Participants were 80 healthy adolescents and their mothers. Durations of maternal positive (PA) and negative affective (NA) expressions were observed during a conflict resolution task and a positive event planning interaction task. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) procedures were employed to assess adolescents' momentary and peak experience of PA in daily life. Results indicated that maternal NA, but not maternal PA, was related to adolescents' EMA-reported PA. Adolescents whose mothers expressed more NA experienced less PA in daily environments. Results suggest that adolescents' exposure to maternal negative affective behavior is associated with adolescents' subjective daily well-being.

Anxious youth may experience altered positive affect (PA) relative to healthy youth, perhaps because of greater sensitivity to social experiences. Altered PA may be especially evident during the transition to adolescence, a period in which positive social events increase in salience and value. The current study evaluated whether anxious youth show differences in baseline PA, rate of return to baseline, and variability around baseline PA and tested whether these differences would depend on social context and anxiety subtype. Participants were 176 9- to 14-year-old youth, including 130 clinically anxious (with Social Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and/or Separation Anxiety Disorder) and 46 healthy youth. Youth reported their current PA, peak PA in the past hour, and social context in natural settings using ecological momentary assessment. Hierarchical linear models showed that both socially anxious and other anxious youth showed greater variability of PA relative to healthy youth. Youth with other anxiety disorders showed higher peak PA to a positive event relative to healthy youth. Feeling close to a friend was associated with higher peak PA, especially for socially anxious youth. Socially anxious youth showed significantly lower peak PA relative to both healthy and other anxious youth when interacting with a less close peer, but similar levels to these youth when interacting with a close friend. These findings suggest that clinically anxious youth may more sensitive to positive events and social interactions than healthy youth. Findings provide potential treatment targets for anxious youth, including applying regulatory strategies to positive events.

Parenting is often implicated as a potential source of individual differences in youths' emotional information processing. The present study examined whether parental affect is related to an important aspect of adolescent emotional development, response to peer evaluation. Specifically, we examined relations between maternal negative affect, observed during parent-adolescent discussion of an adolescent-nominated concern with which s/he wants parental support, and adolescent neural responses to peer evaluation in 40 emotionally healthy and depressed adolescents. We focused on a network of ventral brain regions involved in affective processing of social information: the amygdala, anterior insula, nucleus accumbens, and subgenual anterior cingulate, as well as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Maternal negative affect was not associated with adolescent neural response to peer rejection. However, longer durations of maternal negative affect were associated with decreased responsivity to peer acceptance in the amygdala, left anterior insula, subgenual anterior cingulate, and left nucleus accumbens. These findings provide some of the first evidence that maternal negative affect is associated with adolescents' neural processing of social rewards. Findings also suggest that maternal negative affect could contribute to alterations in affective processing, specifically, dampening the saliency and/or reward of peer interactions during adolescence.

Offspring of depressed parents are at risk for depression and recent evidence suggests that reduced positive affect (PA) may be a marker of risk. We investigated whether self-reports of PA and fMRI-measured striatal response to reward, a neural correlate of PA, are reduced in adolescent youth at high familial risk for depression (HR) relative to youth at low familial risk for depression (LR). Functional magnetic resonance imaging assessments were conducted with 14 HR and 12 LR youth. All youth completed an ecological momentary assessment protocol to measure PA in natural settings and a self-report measure of depression symptomatology. Analyses found that HR youth demonstrated lower striatal response than LR youth during both reward anticipation and outcome. However, after controlling for youth self-reports of depression, HR youth demonstrated lower striatal response than LR youth only during reward anticipation. No significant differences were found between HR and LR youth on subjective ratings of PA or depressive symptoms. Results are consistent with previous findings that reduced reward response is a marker of risk for depression, particularly during reward anticipation, even in the absence of (or accounting for) disrupted subjective mood. Further examinations of prospective associations between reward response and depression onset are needed.

Whereas socialization influences in early childhood have been linked to children's emerging internalizing problems and prosocial behavior, relatively few studies have examined how NE might moderate such associations in both advantageous and maladaptive ways. Furthermore, more research is needed to evaluate the impact of sibling relationships as an influential socialization influence on these child outcomes. In the current study we examined how NE might differentially moderate the associations between quality of relationships with siblings and both internalizing problems and social skills at school entry. NE moderated the effects of positive and destructive sibling relationship quality on child internalizing problems. Specifically, for boys high on NE, more positive sibling relationship quality predicted fewer internalizing problems, but more destructive sibling conflict predicted more internalizing problems. NE also moderated the effects of destructive sibling conflict on child social skills. For boys high on NE, destructive sibling conflict predicted fewer social skills. Boys high on NE appear to show greater susceptibility to the effects of sibling socialization on child outcomes, relative to boys low on NE. The implications of these interactions are discussed with respect to differential susceptibility theory.

Current emotion knowledge (EK) measures examine only one component of the multifaceted construct. We examined the reliability and the construct validity of a new measure of EK, the emotion matching task (EMT). The EMT consists of four parts which measure the components of receptive EK, expressive EK, emotion situation knowledge, and emotion expression matching. First, we compared the EMT and its parts to two widely used EK measures--the Kusche emotional inventory (KEI) and Denham's affective knowledge test (AKT, 1986) in order to establish convergent validity. The EMT and its four parts were strongly correlated with both measures of EK. Regression analyses revealed moderate to strong predictive validity for EMT. Compared with KEI and AKT, the EMT was a more robust predictor of teacher-rated emotion regulation and parent reported effortful control. Compared with KEI and AKT, the EMT correlated similarly with verbal ability and age.

Identifying the neural correlates of positive interactions between friendship dyads may provide insights into mechanisms associated with adolescent social development. Forty-eight 14- to 18-year-old typically developing adolescents were video-recorded discussing a shared positive event with a close friend and subsequently viewed clips during an fMRI scan of that friend during the interaction and of an unfamiliar peer in a similar interaction. Adolescents also reported on their positive affect in daily life while with friends using ecological momentary assessment. We used multivariate repeated measures models to evaluate how positive affect with friends in the laboratory and in daily life was associated with neural response to friend and stranger positive and neutral clips. Adolescents who exhibited more positive affect when with friends in the laboratory showed less dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to friend positive clips. More positive affect when with friends in daily life was associated with less bilateral anterior insula response to friend positive clips, but greater left anterior insula response to stranger positive clips. Findings provide information on the role of lateral prefrontal cortex and anterior insula in enjoyment of friendships during adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that depression in men is associated with risk for seriously adverse consequences, evaluating how putative neural mechanisms of depression—such as reward-related frontostriatal connectivity—may be altered in late adolescent boys with a history of depression is an important research aim. Adolescents and adults with depression have been demonstrated to show blunted striatal response and heightened medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activation to winning reward. Function in reward circuits appears to be best understood as coordination of regions within frontostriatal circuitry, and alterations to this circuitry could occur in those with a history of depression. The current study evaluated functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and mPFC in a sample of 166 ethnically diverse boys with and without a history of depression. Participants completed an fMRI monetary reward paradigm at age 20. Lifetime history of depression and other psychiatric illnesses was measured prospectively and longitudinally, using structured clinical interviews at 7 time points from ages 8 to 20. Boys with a history of depression showed heightened positive connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and the mPFC relative to boys with no psychiatric history when winning rewards relative to losing rewards. This altered frontostriatal connectivity pattern was also associated with greater number of depressive episodes in the boys’ lifetime. History of depression in late adolescent boys may be associated with altered coordination between the nucleus accumbens and mPFC when winning reward. This coordination could reflect oversignaling of the mPFC to dampen typical ventral striatum response or enhance weak ventral striatum response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current emotion knowledge measures examine only one component of the multifaceted construct. We examined the reliability and the construct validity of a new measure of emotion knowledge (EK), the Emotion Matching Task (EMT). The EMT consists of four parts which measure the components of receptive emotion knowledge, expressive emotion knowledge, emotion situation knowledge, and emotion expression matching. First, we compared the EMT and its parts to two widely used EK measures-the Kusche Emotional Inventory (KEI) and Denham's Affective Knowledge Test (AKT, 1986) in order to establish convergent validity. The EMT and its four parts were strongly correlated with both measures of emotion knowledge. Regression analyses revealed moderate to strong predictive validity for EMT. Compared to KEI and AKT, the EMT was a more robust predictor of teacher rated emotion regulation and parent reported effortful control. Compared to KEI and AKT, the EMT correlated similarly with verbal ability and age.