Archival ReportAmygdala Reward Reactivity Mediates the Association Between Preschool Stress Response and Depression Severity
Section snippets
Participants
There were 88 preschoolers between 4 and 6 years of age recruited from pediatrician’s offices, daycare centers, and other community resources throughout the greater St. Louis, MO, area. To increase sample variance in depressive symptoms, a validated screening checklist, Preschool Feelings Checklist (PFC) (27), was used to identify preschoolers with and without elevated depressive symptoms. Caregivers indicating that their preschoolers had low (≤1 PFC items endorsed) or high (≥3 PFC items
Demographic and Child Characteristics
See Table 1 for sample demographic and diagnostic characteristics. Average scores were 16.1 (± 6.3; range, 1–47) for PFC-S, 8 (± 9.2; range, 0–34) for BDI-II, and 35.6 ng/mL (± 5.5; range, 27.23–53.52 ng/mL) for AUCg. Preschoolers with a diagnosis of MDD on the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia-Early Childhood version had higher PFC-S scores than children who did not: MDD = 28 (± 10), no MDD = 12.5 (± 8.4) (t50 = 5.4, p < .001). Children not providing usable fMRI data
Discussion
The current study used fMRI to examine whether neural reactivity to reward mediates the relationship between cortisol response following a stressor and depression severity in preschool-age children. Our results extend prior reports in older age groups (14) by showing that both higher total cortisol output following a stressor and attenuated neural sensitivity to highly salient outcomes (i.e., gain and loss) are already related to increased depression severity in preschoolers. They also match
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant Nos. K23 MH098176 and R01 MH110488 to MSG) and McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience (to MSG). The National Institute of Mental Health and McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience had no further role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; or preparation, review, and approval of the manuscript.
We thank the children and their families who participated in
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