The influence of trait approach & avoidance motivation on the course of depression and anxiety

Trait approach and avoidance motivation are higher-order individual differences that are related to personality, emotional temperament, and basic drives (i.e., sensitivity to pain and pleasure). Previous research has shown that approach and avoidance motivation are related to depression and anxiety, but the question of how trait motivation affects these dimensions of psychopathology has yet to be answered. The present study aimed to begin to answer this question by identifying potential neural mechanisms that could explain this relationship. Dimensional measures of depression (i.e., depressive loss of interest, depressive low positive affect) and anxiety (i.e., anxious arousal, anxious apprehension) were gathered at two time-points. Neural data and measures of trait approach and avoidance were gathered at the first time point. Trait avoidance motivation was associated with increases in both dimensions of depression and anxious arousal, and trait approach motivation was associated with decreases in depressive low positive affect. An adaptive balance between approach and avoidance motivation (i.e., more approach relative to avoidance) was generally associated with decreases in both dimensions of depression and anxious arousal. Neural activity during the anticipation of punishments and the receipt of disappointing feedback mediated the relationship between this adaptive balance and changes in anxious arousal and depressive low positive affect, respectively. Regions that mediated changes in anxious arousal were part of neural networks associated with self-referential processing, inhibition, and the integration of emotional information with goals (e.g., default mode network). Regions that mediated changes in depressive low positive affect were associated with processing the somatic aspects of emotion. Results suggest that those with an adaptive balance between trait approach and avoidance motivation engage with negative or disappointing information and that this engagement is protective against worsening symptoms of depressive low positive affect and anxious arousal. These findings are in line with theory undergirding therapeutic approaches that encourage engaging with feared or unpleasant information as opposed to avoiding it. Furthermore, these findings show that trait approach and avoidance motivation are associated with a broad network of brain regions related to important aspects of emotional experience and that these networks may be fruitful targets for future mechanistic and therapeutic research

Approach/avoidance motivation and goal maintenance: implications for models of executive function

Trait motivational approach and avoidance tendencies have a differential effect on cognitive processing, at least in part via associations with affective traits. Positive and negative emotionality are fundamental components of these motivational dispositions and have been linked in some studies to a broadening (approach motivation) and a narrowing (avoidance motivation) of attention. Alternatively, other research has suggested that the level of motivation, not the positive or negative valence of emotionality, drives the narrowing of attention. To date, a shortcoming of the literature is that the relationships between trait motivation and cognition have most commonly been assessed using single measures of both constructs. The goal of the present study was to investigate the relationship between trait motivation and cognition more broadly at the latent factor level using multiple measures of both motivation and executive function. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate latent approach/avoidance variables from questionnaire measures and examine their relationship with latent models of executive functioning variables estimated from several neuropsychological tests in an undergraduate sample (N=103). The models of executive function that were used to guide analyses were the unity and diversity model (Miyake & Friedman, 2012) and the dual-network model (Dosenbach et al., 2008). Results indicated that higher levels of both approach and avoidance motivation were associated with better performance on executive function tasks associated with keeping task goals in mind across multiple trials. Findings supported the dual-network model and suggested that levels of motivation were more important than the valence of emotionality

Visual cortical plasticity and the risk for psychosis: An interim analysis of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study.

BackgroundAdolescence/early adulthood coincides with accelerated pruning of cortical synapses and the onset of schizophrenia. Cortical gray matter reduction and dysconnectivity in schizophrenia are hypothesized to result from impaired synaptic plasticity mechanisms, including long-term potentiation (LTP), since deficient LTP may result in too many weak synapses that are then subject to over-pruning. Deficient plasticity has already been observed in schizophrenia. Here, we assessed whether such deficits are present in the psychosis risk syndrome (PRS), particularly those who subsequently convert to full psychosis.MethodsAn interim analysis was performed on a sub-sample from the NAPLS-3 study, including 46 healthy controls (HC) and 246 PRS participants. All participants performed an LTP-like visual cortical plasticity paradigm involving assessment of visual evoked potentials (VEPs) elicited by vertical and horizontal line gratings before and after high frequency ("tetanizing") visual stimulation with one of the gratings to induce "input-specific" neuroplasticity (i.e., VEP changes specific to the tetanized stimulus). Non-parametric, cluster-based permutation testing was used to identify electrodes and timepoints that demonstrated input-specific plasticity effects.ResultsInput-specific pre-post VEP changes (i.e., increased negative voltage) were found in a single spatio-temporal cluster covering multiple occipital electrodes in a 126-223 ms time window. This plasticity effect was deficient in PRS individuals who subsequently converted to psychosis, relative to PRS non-converters and HC.ConclusionsInput-specific LTP-like visual plasticity can be measured from VEPs in adolescents and young adults. Interim analyses suggest that deficient visual cortical plasticity is evident in those PRS individuals at greatest risk for transition to psychosis