Neural Response to Rewarding Social Feedback in Never-Depressed Adolescent Girls and Their Mothers With Remitted Depression: Associations With Multiple Risk Indices

Prevention of depression requires a clear understanding of etiology. Previous studies have identified reduced neural responses to monetary reward as a risk factor for depression, but social reward processing may be particularly relevant to depression. This study investigated associations between neural responses to social reward and three well-established risk factors for depression: personal history, family history, and interpersonal stress. We examined the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential sensitive to rewarding feedback, in a sample of 85 women with and without remitted depression and their never-depressed adolescent daughters. In never-depressed daughters, maternal history of depression predicted a blunted social RewP, but interpersonal stress did not. In the mothers, greater interpersonal stress predicted a blunted RewP, but personal depression history was not significant. Combined, these data suggest that personal history, family history, and interpersonal stress may converge on social reward sensitivity, which may advance future research to understand the development of depression. General Scientific Summary This study examined whether individuals at elevated risk for depression had blunted neural responses to rewarding social feedback (i.e., acceptance) in a sample of mothers with a history of depression at risk for a recurrent depressive episode, and their never-depressed adolescent daughters at risk for a first episode of depression. We found that mothers who experienced more interpersonal stress in the 3 months leading up to the study had less neural response to acceptance. Daughters whose mothers had had depression also had less brain activation to social acceptance. These results suggest that less neural response to social acceptance may be a risk marker for depression in some individuals.