Parental History of Major Depressive Disorder Moderates the Relation Between Neighborhood Disadvantage and Reward Responsiveness in Children

In this study, we examined associations between census-derived indices of neighborhood disadvantage and children’s reward outcome processing and whether these relations would be stronger among children already at risk for alterations in reward processing due to having a parental history of major depressive disorder (MDD) compared to children of never depressed parents. Participants were 224 children aged 7–11 years old and their parent. Parents were required to either have a history of MDD or no lifetime history of any depressive disorder. To measure reward outcome processing, we focused on the reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential (ERP) elicited following gain and loss outcome feedback while children completed a monetary reward task. Census-derived measures of neighborhood disadvantage based upon families’ addresses included the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), neighborhood crime risk, and the Child Opportunity Index (COI). The general pattern of findings across indices was that higher levels of neighborhood disadvantage were associated with more blunted neural reactivity to both gain and loss feedback, but only among children with a parental history of MDD and not among children of never depressed parents. These results suggest that broader contextual stressors may impact how youth process reward outcome feedback, especially youth already at heightened risk for depression, which may have implications for understanding risk for disorders associated with reward dysfunction.