Catch the Drift: Depressive Symptoms Track Neural Response During More Efficient Decision-making for Negative Self-referents

Background: Adolescence is a time of heightened risk for developing depression and also a critical period for the development and integration of self-identity. Despite this, the relation between the neurophysiological correlates of self-referential processing and major depressive symptoms in youth is not well understood. Here, we leverage computational modeling of the self-referential encoding task (SRET) to identify behavioral moderators of the association between the posterior late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential associated with emotion regulation, and youth self-reported symptoms of depression. Specifically, within a drift-diffusion framework, we evaluated whether the association between the posterior LPP and youth symptoms of major depression was moderated by drift rate, a parameter reflecting processing efficiency during self-evaluative decisions.

Methods: A sample of 106 adolescents, aged 12 to 17 (53% male; = 14.49, = 1.70), completed the SRET with concurrent high-density electroencephalography and self-report measures of depression and anxiety.

Results: Findings indicated a significant moderation: for youth showing greater processing efficiency (drift rate) when responding to negative compared to positive words, larger posterior LPPs predicted greater depressive symptom severity.

Limitations: We relied on a community sample and our study was cross-sectional in nature. Future longitudinal work with clinically depressed youth would be beneficial.

Conclusions: Our results suggest a neurobehavioral model of adolescent depression wherein efficient processing of negative information co-occurs with increased demands on affective self-regulation. Our findings also have clinical relevance; youth's neurophysiological response (posterior LPP) and performance during the SRET may serve as a novel target for tracking treatment-related changes in one's self-identity.