Neurophysiological reward responsiveness, stress, and depressive symptoms across the perinatal period

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Perinatal depression (i.e., depression during pregnancy and following childbirth) is a prevalent and debilitating condition that is associated with significant impairments in maternal functioning and negative impacts on offspring, making the identification of targets for prevention critically needed. Neuroscience research outside of the perinatal period has shown a prospective association between reduced neural reward responsiveness and depression, but the extent to which depression further alters reward responsiveness has yet to be examined. The perinatal period presents a unique time of adaptations of the reward system which have implications for the development of depression, but neuroscience research has primarily been limited to the postpartum period due to concerns about the safety of neuroimaging during pregnancy. Stress has been shown both to reduce reward responsiveness and moderate effects of low reward responsiveness on depression, adding further complexity to pathways to depression across time. Given the added stress and unique biological changes associated with reward system adaptations, longitudinal work is needed to understand pathways through which women develop perinatal depression. As part of a larger project, this research study will use safe and temporally sensitive methods to measure neural reward responsiveness, stress, and depressive symptoms in 100 pregnant women at 20 weeks gestation, 34 weeks gestation, and 8 weeks postpartum. At each assessment, participants will complete a monetary incentive delay task while electroencephalogram is recorded in response to reward and loss feedback. Event-related potential (e.g., the reward positivity, a reliable time-domain measure of initial reward responsiveness) and time-frequency data (i.e., delta and theta activity, frequency-domain markers of sensitivity to rewards and negative outcomes, respectively) will be used to measure neurophysiological response to reward. Participants will complete self-report and interview measures of depressive symptoms and stress at each visit. Through the longitudinal collection of these data, the present research will examine longitudinal associations between reduced reward responsiveness and depression using an innovative bidirectional model to tease apart directionality of these associations across time (Specific Aim 1). This work will also test stress as a moderator of the associations between reward responsiveness and depressive symptoms across the perinatal period (Specific Aim 2). This predoctoral fellowship award will bring together a team of experts in their respective fields and allow for advanced training in life stress assessment, perinatal depression and risk, EEG time-frequency analysis, and quantitative methods. Together, the research project and training will provide the fellow the opportunity to develop necessary skills for a productive career as a clinical scientist investigating alterations in emotional and social processing and how these processes contribute to the development of mood disorders to inform intervention.