Abstract
Background
Although research has found that life stress is associated with reward-related brain
activity, few studies have examined how cumulative stressors occurring over the entire
lifetime affect reward processing during adolescence.
Method
To address this issue, we investigated how lifetime stressor exposure related to reward
processing, indexed by the reward positivity (RewP), in 240 adolescent girls between
8 and 14 years old (M = 12.4). Participants were followed for two years. They completed a reward task at
baseline and follow up, and the Stress and Adversity Inventory at follow-up.
Results
As hypothesized, greater lifetime stressor exposure was related to a blunted RewP
at the follow-up session while controlling for baseline age, baseline RewP, and time
between assessments. Furthermore, this association was evident for acute but not chronic
lifetime stressors.
Conclusions
These data suggest that the development of adaptive reward processing may be adversely
impacted by experiencing major life stressors. The results may thus have implications
for understanding how stressors increase risk for psychopathology, such as major depressive
disorder.
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Accepted:
May 17,
2022
Received in revised form:
April 26,
2022
Received:
January 22,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
Funding
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant MH097767 to G.H., NIH grant 5T32 MH093311-09 to K.B., and NIH grant F32 MH125504 to C.J.B. G.M.S. was supported by grant #OPR21101 from the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine and by contract #21-10317 from the Office of the California Surgeon General and California Department of Health Care Services, which supports the UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network. These organizations had no role in designing or planning this study; in collecting, analyzing, or interpreting the data; in writing the article; or in deciding to submit this article for publication.
Conflict of Interest
The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
1 Neither baseline age (p = .728, 95% CIb [- 0.03, 0.04]) nor baseline RewP (p = .954, 95% CIb [- 0.01, 0.01]) interacted with lifetime stressor exposure to predict RewP at follow up.
2 Neither baseline age (p = .367, 95% CIb [- 0.03, 0.09]) nor baseline RewP (p = .859, 95% CIb [- 0.02, 0.02]) interacted with lifetime acute stressor exposure to predict RewP at follow up.
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Society of Biological Psychiatry.
