Age‐typical changes in neural reward response are moderated by maternal anhedonia

Abstract

Reward response and mood disorders both increase during adolescence. Here, we investigate whether age and gonadal hormone levels relate to neural response to win and loss feedback in 9‐ to 14‐year‐old girls and whether such relations are moderated by maternal anhedonia, a factor linked to psychopathology risk and reward response. Psychiatrically healthy daughters of mothers who did not meet criteria for any current DSM‐5 disorder or past anxiety/depression diagnosis (N = 69) completed a monetary fMRI guessing task and provided saliva samples for gonadal hormone assay. Voxelwise regressions revealed unique quadratic effects of age and linear effects of gonadal hormones; neither effect was explained by reported puberty. Striatal/insular responses to win/loss feedback peaked between 12 and 13 years, whereas estradiol predicted greater response to wins versus losses within the medial prefrontal cortex, concurrently. Maternal anhedonia specifically moderated the quadratic effect of age within dorsolateral striatum and insula. Daughters of mothers reporting greater anhedonia showed an earlier peak in striatal/insular response to reward and loss feedback. As such, maternal anhedonia predicted blunted striatal/insular response to feedback only in older daughters. A similar pattern was observed for daughters of mothers with lifetime depression in exploratory analyses. These cross‐sectional findings suggest that familial anhedonia may relate to altered trajectories of reward responding during adolescence and that these effects are specific to age.

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