One in eight children experience early life stress (ELS), which increases risk for psychopathology. ELS, particularly neglect, has been associated with reduced responsivity to reward. However, little work has investigated the computational specifics of this disrupted reward response – particularly with respect to the neural response to Reward Prediction Errors (RPE) – a critical signal for successful instrumental learning – and the extent to which they are augmented to novel stimuli. The goal of the current study was to investigate the associations of abuse and neglect, and neural representation of RPE to novel and non-novel stimuli.

One hundred and seventy-eight participants (aged 10–18, M = 14.9, s.d. = 2.38) engaged in the Novelty task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. In this task, participants learn to choose novel or non-novel stimuli to win monetary rewards varying from $0 to $0.30 per trial. Levels of abuse and neglect were measured using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire.

Adolescents exposed to high levels of neglect showed reduced RPE-modulated blood oxygenation level dependent response within medial and lateral frontal cortices particularly when exploring novel stimuli (p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons) relative to adolescents exposed to lower levels of neglect.

These data expand on previous work by indicating that neglect, but not abuse, is associated with impairments in neural RPE representation within medial and lateral frontal cortices. However, there was no association between neglect and behavioral impairments on the Novelty task, suggesting that these neural differences do not necessarily translate into behavioral differences within the context of the Novelty task.

Adolescent substance use, externalizing and attention problems, and early life stress (ELS) commonly co-occur. These psychopathologies show overlapping neural dysfunction in the form of reduced recruitment of reward processing neuro-circuitries. However, it is unclear to what extent these psychopathologies show common v. different neural dysfunctions as a function of symptom profiles, as no studies have directly compared neural dysfunctions associated with each of these psychopathologies to each other.

In study 1, a latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted in a sample of 266 adolescents (aged 13–18, 41.7% female, 58.3% male) from a residential youth care facility and the surrounding community to investigate substance use, externalizing and attention problems, and ELS psychopathologies and their co-presentation. In study 2, we examined a subsample of 174 participants who completed the Passive Avoidance learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine differential and/or common reward processing neuro-circuitry dysfunctions associated with symptom profiles based on these co-presentations.

In study 1, LPA identified profiles of substance use plus rule-breaking behaviors, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and ELS. In study 2, the substance use/rule-breaking profile was associated with reduced recruitment of reward processing and attentional neuro-circuitries during the Passive Avoidance task (p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons).

Findings indicate that there is reduced responsivity of striato-cortical regions when receiving outcomes on an instrumental learning task within a profile of adolescents with substance use and rule-breaking behaviors. Mitigating reward processing dysfunction specifically may represent a potential intervention target for substance-use psychopathologies accompanied by rule-breaking behaviors.

Irritability and anxiety frequently co-occur in pediatric populations. Studies separately looking at the neural correlates of these symptoms have identified engagement of similar neural systems – particularly those implicated in emotional processing. Both irritability and anxiety can be considered negative valence emotional states that might relate to emotion dysregulation. However, previous work has not examined the neural responding during the performance of an emotion regulation task as a function of interaction between irritability and anxiety simultaneously.

This fMRI study involved 155 participants (90 with significant psychopathologies and 92 male) who performed the Affective Stroop Task, designed to engage emotion regulation as a function of task demands. The Affective Reactivity Index (ARI) was used to index irritability and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) was used to index anxiety.

Levels of irritability, but not anxiety, was positively correlated with responses to visual images within the right rostro-medial prefrontal cortex and left anterior cingulate cortex during view trials. The second region of ventral anterior cingulate cortex showed a condition-by-emotion-by-ARI score-by-SCARED score interaction. Specifically, anxiety level was significantly correlated with a decreased differential BOLD response to negative relative to neutral view trials but only in the presence of relatively high irritability.

Atypical maintenance of emotional stimuli within the rostro-medial prefrontal cortex may exacerbate the difficulties faced by adolescents with irritability. Moreover, increased anxiety combined with significant irritability may disrupt an automatic emotional conflict-based form of emotion regulation that is particularly associated with the ventral anterior cingulate cortex.