Social Feedback Biases Emerge During Recall but Not Prediction: Relevance for the Development of Social Anxiety

Memory is a reconstructive process that can result in events being recalled as more positive or negative than they actually were. While positive recall biases may contribute to well-being, negative recall biases may promote internalizing symptoms, such as social anxiety. Adolescence is characterized by increased salience of peers and peak incidence of social anxiety. Symptoms often wax and wane before becoming more intractable during adulthood. Open questions remain regarding how and when biases for social feedback are expressed, and how individual differences in biases may contribute to social anxiety across development. Two studies used a novel social feedback and cued response task to assess biases about being liked or disliked when retrieving memories versus making predictions. Findings revealed a robust positivity bias about memories for social feedback, regardless of whether memories were true or false. Moreover, memory bias was associated with social anxiety in a developmentally sensitive way. Among adults (Study 1), more severe symptoms of social anxiety were associated with a negativity bias. During the transition from adolescence to adulthood (Study 2), age strengthened the positivity bias in those with less severe symptoms and strengthened the negativity bias in those with more severe symptoms. These patterns of bias were isolated to perceived memory retrieval and did not generalize to predictions about social feedback. These results provide initial support for a model by which schemas may infiltrate perceptions of memory for past, but not predictions of future, social events, shaping susceptibility for social anxiety, particularly during the transition into adulthood

Substance Abuse in Emerging Adults: The Role of Neuromelanin and Ventral Striatal Response to Social and Monetary Rewards

Perturbations in dopamine system function may increase risk of substance use disorder (SUD). We recently demonstrated that neuromelanin (NM) MRI signal in the substantia nigra, a non-invasive index of dopamine system function, is elevated in long term cocaine users (Cassidy et al., 2020). However, it is unclear whether elevated NM-MRI signal is linked to risk of SUD, or is a byproduct of long-term drug use. Our prior work failed to show relations between NM-MRI signal and functional engagement of ventral striatum during a monetary reward task. However, social experiences are commonly linked to drug use and relapse. Given that, NM-MRI signal may be more closely linked to ventral striatal engagement during social, rather than monetary reward processing. Emerging adults (n = 33, 21.88 ± 4.35 years) with varying levels of substance abuse, but without SUD, underwent NM-MRI and fMRI during social and monetary reward processing tasks. Voxelwise analysis within the substantia nigra (SN) demonstrated lower NM-MRI signal was associated with more severe substance abuse. Lower right ventral striatal engagement to social reward was also associated with more severe substance abuse. This relation was moderated by SN NM-MRI signal such that diminished striatal response to reward was associated with greater substance abuse among those with low NM-MRI signal, but lower substance abuse among those with high NM-MRI signal. Unexpectedly, higher right ventral striatal engagement during monetary reward was associated with more severe substance abuse. This relation was moderated by SN NM-MRI signal such that greater striatal response to reward was associated with greater substance abuse among those with low NM-MRI signal. Taken together, we provide preliminary evidence that, in emerging adults, low rather than high dopamine system function may increase risk of substance abuse, and strengthen the association between substance use and the brain’s sensitivity to social and monetary outcomes in different ways