title: Neurophysiological Processing of Emotion in Children of Mothers with a History of Depression: the Moderating Role of Preschool Persistent Irritability.
abstract: Research on emotion-processing biases in offspring of depressed parents has produced a variety of findings. Child persistent irritability may be a useful clinical feature that demarcates subgroups of offspring with distinct patterns of emotion processing. The present study examined whether early persistent irritability moderated the relationship between maternal lifetime history of a depressive disorder and appetitive- and aversive-emotion processing in 338 never-depressed pre-adolescent children (43.8% female). When children were 3, mothers were interviewed about children's persistent irritability. Six years later, EEG was recorded while children completed a task in which the late positive potential (LPP), a neural index of emotional reactivity, was measured in response to appetitive, aversive, and neutral images. At both assessments, mothers were interviewed about their own psychopathology. Among offspring of depressed mothers, children characterized by high levels of early persistent irritability showed an enhanced LPP to appetitive and aversive compared to neutral images (i.e., ΔLPP), whereas children with low levels of early irritability showed attenuated ΔLPPs. In offspring of mothers with no history of depression, there was no association between irritability and emotion processing. Findings suggest that persistent irritability influences the pattern of emotion-processing aberrations in offspring of depressed mothers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-2500, USA. ellen.kessel@stonybrook.edu.
authors.forename: Ellen M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Kessel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-2500, USA.
authors.forename: Autumn
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kujawa
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Maryland-College Park, College Park, USA.
authors.forename: Lea R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Dougherty
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-2500, USA.
authors.forename: Greg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hajcak
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Gabrielle A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-2500, USA.|Department of Psychiatry, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Klein
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D003866:Depressive Disorder; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007508:Irritable Mood / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male
keywords: Depression; Emotion processing; Event-related potentials; Irritability; Offspring