Peer-reviewed article
The Impact of Adversity and Maternal Depression on Neural Reward Responsivity in Young Children.
Granros M, Engstrom A, Feurer C, Sheena M, Kujawa A et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how early life adversity—particularly deprivation and threat—affects how children's brains respond to rewards, and whether a mother's depression makes this worse. Researchers tested 71 children aged 5-6 years using brain imaging while they completed a reward task. Children who experienced deprivation combined with mothers having depression symptoms showed weaker neural responses to rewards compared to other children. The findings suggest that children facing both poverty-related hardship and parental mental illness need early support.
Key points
- Early life adversity composites alone were not significantly related to reward brain responses
- Children exposed to deprivation showed more blunted reward responses specifically when mothers had elevated depression symptoms
- Maternal depression symptoms moderated (strengthened) the association between deprivation and altered reward processing
- The most pronounced alterations in reward responsiveness occurred with dual exposure to deprivation and maternal depression
- Findings highlight need for early interventions targeting reward functioning in high-risk youth
Limitations
The study is cross-sectional with a small sample (n=71) from a single cohort study, limiting generalisability. The research cannot determine causality or whether altered reward processing precedes or results from adversity and maternal depression.
Abstract
Background Early life adversity (ELA) is a known risk factor for mental health disorders across development and may confer vulnerability to psychopathology through alterations in reward processing. However, little is known about how distinct dimensions of ELA, particularly experiences of threat and deprivation across individual and neighborhood levels, shape reward responsiveness in early childhood. Prior work in adolescents suggests that maternal depression history may moderate associations between ELA and reward reactivity, underscoring the importance of considering familial risk contexts. We examined associations between threat and deprivation and electrocortical reward responsivity in early childhood, and whether these relations were moderated by maternal depression symptoms and diagnoses. Methods Participants were 71 children (ages 5-6 years) enrolled in a study on the intergenerational transmission of depression. ELA composites and dimension-specific indices of threat and deprivation were derived from parent-reported measures and geocoded neighborhood indicators. Maternal depression was indexed by a self-report measure of symptoms and diagnostic interviews. Children completed the doors reward task to assess the reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential. Results Linear regressions indicated that ELA composites were not significantly related to RewP. However, current maternal depression symptoms moderated the association between deprivation and RewP, such that children exposed to greater deprivation exhibited more blunted RewP, specifically if their mother also exhibited increased depression symptoms. Conclusions Findings demonstrate the most pronounced alterations in reward responsiveness in youth with dual exposure to experiences of deprivation and elevated maternal depression symptoms, highlighting the need for early interventions targeting reward functioning in high-risk youth.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- No intervention was tested; this is an observational study examining associations between adversity, maternal depression, and reward responsivity
- Population
- 71 children aged 5-6 years enrolled in a study on intergenerational transmission of depression
Key finding
Early life adversity composites were not significantly related to reward positivity