title: Reward Anticipation in Ventral Striatum and Individual Sensitivity to Reward: A Pilot Study of a Child-Friendly fMRI Task.
abstract: Reward processing has been implicated in developmental disorders. However, the classic task to probe reward anticipation, the monetary incentive delay task, has an abstract coding of reward and no storyline and may therefore be less appropriate for use with developmental populations. We modified the task to create a version appropriate for use with children. We investigated whether this child-friendly version could elicit ventral striatal activation during reward anticipation in typically developing children and young adolescents (aged 9.5-14.5). In addition, we tested whether our performance-based measure of reward sensitivity was associated with anticipatory activity in ventral striatum. Reward anticipation was related to activity in bilateral ventral striatum. Moreover, we found an association between individual reward sensitivity and activity in ventral striatum. We conclude that this task assesses ventral striatal activity in a child-friendly paradigm. The combination with a performance-based measure of reward sensitivity potentially makes the task a powerful tool for developmental imaging studies of reward processing.
authors.affiliation: NICHE Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Branko M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: van Hulst
authors.affiliation: NICHE Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: de Zeeuw
authors.affiliation: NICHE Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Kellina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lupas
authors.affiliation: NICHE Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Dienke J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Bos
authors.affiliation: NICHE Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sebastiaan F W
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Neggers
authors.affiliation: NICHE Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Durston
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward; D066328:Ventral Striatum / Q000473:pathology* / Q000502:physiology