Hedonic processing and associations with depression and emotion regulation: a joint ERP and behavioral study
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Meeting name
Sponsors
Date
Journal Title
Format
Thesis
Subject
Abstract
Major Depressive Disorder is widely believed to be a disorder of impaired hedonic processing, and research on the development and maintenance of depression indicates that a blunted neural and psychological response to obtaining reward may be a characteristic associated with risk for depression that develops early in life and sustains throughout adolescence and into adulthood. Depression is increasingly understood as a disorder not just of affective experience, but of affect regulation. Conceptual overlap between psychophysiological responses to reward and selfreported reaction to affective experiences suggest that examining both constructs together may advance understanding of depression as a disorder of emotion regulation. Additionally, there is some evidence that deficits in approach behaviors and hedonic impairment in individuals with depression may not simply be due to reduced sensitivity to a single reward, but to difficulties in integrating reinforcement history over time. In the current study, participants (N=90) completed (1) a computerized guessing task while ERPs were recorded to assess psychophysiological reward sensitivity, (2) a probabilistic selection task to assess reward learning, and (3) a battery of questionnaires assessing affect, affect regulation, and depressive symptoms. Half of participants were given a savoring intervention and instructed to savor wins during the guessing task. Findings indicate that consideration of both reward processing and emotion regulation may provide a unique understanding of depressive symptoms, and that both reward sensitivity and depressive symptoms together predict performance on a reward learning task. Better understanding of the relationships between depressive symptoms, emotion regulation, and multiple facets of reward processing may help explain how implementation of emotion regulation strategies, such as savoring, may be a way to reduce symptoms of/risk for depression.
Table of Contents
DOI
PubMed ID
Degree
Ph. D.