Charting Positive Valence Systems Trajectories in Offspring of Depressed Mothers to Predict Internalizing Symptoms in Early Childhood

PROJECT SUMMARY Offspring of mothers with depression are 2 to 3 times more likely than offspring of never-depressed mothers to develop anxiety and depressive disorders. Meta-analytic work shows that relations between maternal depression and offspring internalizing symptoms are stronger in younger than older children, highlighting the critical need to study causal risk mechanisms early in development among these high-risk (HR) youth to develop targeted prevention efforts. Across studies, HR youth are characterized by alterations within the NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) construct of Positive Valence Systems (PVS). Specifically, reduced reward responsiveness (RR), a PVS subconstruct, is consistently observed across behavioral and brain units in HR youth and predicts internalizing symptoms during adolescence, suggesting that reduced RR represents a key vulnerability marker to target with prevention efforts for HR youth. Yet, previous research in this area has focused predominantly on adolescent samples despite increasing evidence that PVS impairments are apparent in preschool-aged youth across internalizing disorders. Prior studies examining PVS function in HR samples are also largely limited by a single PVS assessment, limiting our understanding of how maternal depression impacts both overall levels and trajectories of PVS function in offspring during early development. To address these gaps, we will use an innovative, multimodal, accelerated longitudinal design to chart trajectories of PVS function across early childhood in a large sample (N=450) of biological offspring of mothers with and without depression histories recruited across two sites. Children, ages 4-6 at baseline, will complete developmentally sensitive tasks evoking neural (event-related potentials) and behavioral indicators of RR to tangible and social rewards at baseline and 1- and 2-year follow-ups, resulting in trajectories of PVS function from 4 to 8 years. We will assess factors that protect against or exacerbate alterations in PVS development to identify HR youth who could most benefit from PVS-related interventions. Specifically, our data suggest that maternal positive emotion behaviors (i.e., positive affect, parenting, and socialization) can buffer against maternal depression effects on child PVS function, whereas exposure to early life adversity (ELA), particularly deprivation experiences, potentiates effects. Thus, maternal positive emotion behaviors and child ELA exposure at individual and community-levels will be assessed at every time point, along with parent and clinician-rated assessments of child’s internalizing symptoms and disorders. This unique design will allow us to examine the effects of maternal depression on overall PVS levels and developmental trajectories in offspring during early childhood (Aim 1), test PVS function as a mechanism of maternal depression effects on early-emerging internalizing symptoms (Aim 2) and examine key risk and protective factors that moderate effects of maternal depression on child PVS function (Aim 3). Findings from the project may lead to novel PVS prevention efforts that could be delivered during early child development to break intergenerational risk cycles more effectively.