An Investigation of Functional Brain Activity in Youth At-Risk for Serious Mental Illness during a Monetary Incentive Delay Task: Results from the PROCAN Study
Poster B39, Tuesday, October%209, 11:30%20am%20-%201:00%20pm, Essex%20Ballroom
Paul Metzak1, Signe Bray1,2,3,4, Stefanie Hassel1, Glenda MacQueen1, Benjamin Goldstein5,6, JianLi Wang7,8, Sidney Kennedy9,10,11,12, Catherine Lebel1,2,3,4, Jean Addington1; 1Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary, 2Department of Radiology, University of Calgary, 3Child & Adolescent Imaging Research (CAIR) Program, 4Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, 5Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 6Centre for Youth Bipolar Disorder, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 7Work & Mental Health Research Unit, Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, 8School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, 9Department of Psychiatry, University Health Network & St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, 10Arthur Sommer Rotenberg Chair in Suicide and Depression Studies, St. Michael’s Hospital, 11Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital, 12Krembil Research Institute, University Health Network
The Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task shows robust reward anticipation effects making it an ideal paradigm for use in psychiatric populations at risk for anhedonia symptoms. The MID involves making a response to a briefly presented stimulus by pressing a button, where each stimulus is associated with a monetary reward (or none). It has been used extensively in neuroimaging research to identify the neural basis of the affective response to reward, as well as to identify changes in the reward network related to psychiatric symptoms and disorders. However, much less is known about the relationship between the neurobiology of the reward network and youth at-risk for serious mental illness (SMI). In order to address this gap in the literature, the Canadian Psychiatric Risk & Outcome (PROCAN) study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine a sample of youth at various stages of risk for SMI while performing the MID task. These stages included healthy controls (HC), non-help seeking youth with risk factors (Stage 0), distressed youth with early mood and anxiety symptoms (Stage 1a), and youth with subthreshold psychotic symptoms (Stage 1b). Although the fMRI results indicated that participants in all stages utilized a similar brain network to perform the task, differences in activity were found in the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia and insula when comparing the more symptomatic (Stages 1a and 1b) to the less symptomatic participants (HCs and Stage 0).
Topic Area: Neuroimaging