Striatal responsiveness to reward under threat-of-shock and working memory load: A preliminary study.

Reward and stress are important determinants of motivated behaviors. Striatal regions play a crucial role in both motivation and hedonic processes. So far, little is known on how cognitive effort interacts with stress to modulate reward processes. This study examines how cognitive effort (load) interacts with an unpredictable acute stressor (threat-of-shock) to modulate motivational and hedonic processes in healthy adults. A reward task, involving stress with unpredictable mild electric shocks, was conducted in 23 healthy adults aged 20-37 (mean age: 24.7 ± 0.9; 14 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Manipulation included the use of (a) monetary reward for reinforcement, (b) threat-of-shock as the stressor, and (c) a spatial working memory task with two levels of difficulty (low and high load) for cognitive load. Reward-related activation was investigated in a priori three regions of interest, the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), caudate nucleus, and putamen. During anticipation, threat-of-shock or cognitive load did not affect striatal responsiveness to reward. Anticipated reward increased activation in the ventral and dorsal striatum. During feedback delivery, both threat-of-shock and cognitive effort modulated striatal activation. Higher working memory load blunted NAcc responsiveness to reward delivery, while stress strengthened caudate nucleus reactivity regardless reinforcement or load. These findings provide initial evidence that both stress and cognitive load modulate striatal responsiveness during feedback delivery but not during anticipation in healthy adults. Of clinical importance, sustained stress exposure might go along with dysregulated arousal, increasing therefore the risk for the development of maladaptive incentive-triggered motivation. This study brings new insight that might help to build a framework to understand common stress-related disorders, given that these psychiatric disorders involve disturbances of the reward system, cognitive deficits, and abnormal stress reactivity

A cultural psychological perspective on close relationships

People in different cultures have different objectives and ideals in close relationships. This chapter explores the different ideas, values, and practices that underlie people’s striving for different kinds of close relationships across cultures. It focuses on a comparison between “Western” and East Asian contexts. The chapter looks at a few select relational processes for which cross-cultural data are available: Attachment, relationship formation, conflict, and emotion. It proposes that some of the core ideas of cultural psychology are useful for understanding cultural variation in these relational process: there is meaningful cultural variation in each of these that can be understood from the relative foregrounding of either independence or interdependence in the respective cultural contexts. The chapter shows that there is at least one other way of relating that is systematically different from the independent model that has largely been assumed to be universal in close relationship research

Assessment of parental discipline in daily life.

The use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) for studying parenting has been rare. We examined the psychometric properties and structural validity of an EMA Parenting Scale based on 32 mothers' reports of their parenting over a period of 10 consecutive days, and explored the acceptance of the scale and compliance with the procedure. The results suggested that the EMA Parenting Scale was well accepted for the assessment of daily parenting, and that it consistently captured the overreactive and lax dimensions of parenting across different episodes of child misbehavior. Moreover, multilevel analyses suggested that the scale was sensitive to change across different parenting episodes, and that it reliably assessed the dimensions at both the personal and situational levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)

Increased Reward-Related Activation in the Ventral Striatum During Stress Exposure Associated With Positive Affect in the Daily Life of Young Adults With a Family History of Depression. Preliminary Findings.

Background: Being the offspring of a parent with major depression disorder (MDD) is a strong predictor for developing MDD. Blunted striatal responses to reward were identified in individuals with MDD and in asymptomatic individuals with family history of depression (FHD). Stress is a major etiological factor for MDD and was also reported to reduce the striatal responses to reward. The stress-reward interactions in FHD individuals has not been explored yet. Extending neuroimaging results into daily-life experience, self-reported ambulatory measures of positive affect (PA) were shown to be associated with striatal activation during reward processing. A reduction of self-reported PA in daily life is consistently reported in individuals with current MDD. Here, we aimed to test (1) whether increased family risk of depression is associated with blunted neural and self-reported reward responses. (2) the stress-reward interactions at the neural level. We expected a stronger reduction of reward-related striatal activation under stress in FHD individuals compared to HC. (3) the associations between fMRI and daily life self-reported data on reward and stress experiences, with a specific interest in the striatum as a crucial region for reward processing. Method: Participants were 16 asymptomatic young adults with FHD and 16 controls (HC). They performed the Fribourg Reward Task with and without stress induction, using event-related fMRI. We conducted whole-brain analyses comparing the two groups for the main effect of reward (rewarded > not-rewarded) during reward feedback in control (no-stress) and stress conditions. Beta weights extracted from significant activation in this contrast were correlated with self-reported PA and negative affect (NA) assessed over 1 week. Results: Under stress induction, the reward-related activation in the ventral striatum (VS) was higher in the FHD group than in the HC group. Unexpectedly, we did not find significant group differences in the self-reported daily life PA measures. During stress induction, VS reward-related activation correlated positively with PA in both groups and negatively with NA in the HC group. Conclusion: As expected, our results indicate that increased family risk of depression was associated with specific striatum reactivity to reward in a stress condition, and support previous findings that ventral striatal reward-related response is associated with PA. A new unexpected finding is the negative association between NA and reward-related ventral striatal activation in the HC group

Interpersonal benefits of optimistic expectations: Overriding negative responses to partner withdrawal?

Optimism can be seen as an enduring strength in marriage. It provides spouses with a broader and more flexible range of behavioral options and helps them to successfully navigate stressful situations. Optimism is characterized by a positive attitude toward the future and by positive expectations. While a positive attitude toward the future may benefit adaptation, merely holding positive expectations may lead to disappointment and inflexible responding to daily challenges. Using questionnaires and diaries from 103 couples, this study examines how spouses respond to situations where the partner prefers being alone at the end of a workday. We investigated whether and how optimism, and two components of positive expectations, the overall level of and the flexibility, shape these responses. Findings showed that perceived partner withdrawal was associated with less positive and more negative reported behaviors. Optimism buffered this effect above and beyond the effect of positive expectations. Expectation levels indicated no buffering and even a tendency to more negative and less positive reactions. Finally, and unexpectedly, expectation flexibility had no effect on partners’ reported negative behaviors, and was even associated with less positive reported responses to the partner’s withdrawal. Implications for the theoretical understanding of optimism and expectations, as well as for intervention, will be discussed

If you shared my happiness, you are part of me: Capitalization and the experience of couple identity

The way in which individuals react to a partner\u2019s disclosure of positive news (capitalization response) is associated with relational well-being. Two studies analyzed the role of couple identity in explaining the association between perceived capitalization responses and relationship quality. A daily diary study (n = 90 couples) revealed that on days people perceived their partners\u2019 responses as active-constructive, they reported higher levels of couple identity. A longitudinal two-wave study (n = 169 couples) showed that couple identity mediated the link between active-constructive (for both women and men) and passive-destructive responses (only for men) and relationship quality. Overall, our findings suggest that the experience of the partner\u2019s involvement and support in good times contribute to a sense of couple identity, which over the long turn, is associated with partners\u2019 relational well-being

Trajectories of perceived superiority across the transition to marriage

Perceived superiority, the tendency to regard one\u2019s own relationship as better than other people\u2019s relationships, is a key relationship maintenance mechanism. Little is known about whether and how it changes during the transition to marriage, a pivotal moment in most couples\u2019 life cycle. In a longitudinal study following 97 couples for three waves across the transition, men presented stable perceived superiority, whereas women presented a curvilinear change in superiority perceptions, with a substantial increase in perceived superiority between T1 and T2 and a significantly reduced change between T2 and T3. In addition, trajectories differed according to partners\u2019 commitment level. More committed and less committed partners both showed a curvilinear change in perceived superiority, though following different patterns. Results point to the functional value of perceived superiority, which emerges as a strategy aimed at sustaining partners through the challenges deriving from the transition to marriage