Reward Processing and Risk for Depression Across Development

Striatal response to reward has been of great interest in the typical development and psychopathology literatures. These parallel lines of inquiry demonstrate that although typically developing adolescents show robust striatal response to reward, adolescents with major depressive disorder (MDD) and those at high risk for MDD show a blunted response to reward. Understanding how these findings intersect is crucial for the development and application of early preventative interventions in at-risk children, ideally before the sharp increase in the rate of MDD onset that occurs in adolescence. Robust findings relating blunted striatal response to reward and MDD risk are reviewed and situated within a normative developmental context. We highlight the need for future studies investigating longitudinal development, specificity to MDD, and roles of potential moderators and mediators. Offspring of depressed mothers are at increased risk for developing depression and show blunted responses to reward, relative to low-risk peers, within the dorsal and ventral striatum.The strongest evidence for the relationship between depression risk and blunted striatal response to reward has been found during mid-adolescence, a time in development when healthy low-risk groups show maximal striatal response to reward.Blunted striatal response to reward is not simply a consequence of experiencing depression because both never-depressed high-risk adolescents and currently depressed adolescents show a similarly blunted striatal response to reward relative to low-risk controls.Blunted striatal response to reward may specifically relate to maternal depression, and not to maternal anxiety.Blunted striatal response to reward may co-occur with enhanced responses to loss of reward or punishment in high-risk groups.