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Social Processing Deficits in Remitted Adolescent Depression

Award Number: R01MH119771
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 12/01/2019
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2026

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Social Processing Deficits in Remitted Adolescent Depression - Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide and has a peak onset during adolescence. While interventions are moderately effective for many adolescents, 40 to 70% will relapse within 5 years. Further, MDD relapse predicts academic difficulties, risky behaviors, and suicide. Thus, identifying mechanisms of MDD relapse is critical to clarify intervention targets for this significant public health problem. During adolescence, social processes and dynamics (especially with peers) are particularly significant, although it is unclear which social processes are most critical to MDD relapse. The present study focuses on the role of social communication, a set of mechanisms involving the receiving and delivery of socially relevant information. Social communication is especially significant to adolescents, as maladaptive social communication can negatively impact the establishment and maintenance of relationships, thus increasing risk for MDD relapse. For the proposed study, we will employ an NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) lens and use multiple measures (behavior, event-related potentials [ERPs], eye tracking) to compare adolescents (aged 14-17 years) with remitted depression (remMDD; N=200) to healthy controls (HC; N=100) on deficits in several aspects of social communication, including: (i) processing of nonverbal social information, (ii) processing of socioemotional feedback, and (iii) digital communication. First, Aim 1 will test whether remMDD adolescents abnormally process two types of nonverbal social information—facial expressions (as indexed by reduced accuracy and abnormal ERPs [i.e., the N170]) and hand gesturing behaviors (assessed via eye-tracking). Second, Aim 2 will test whether remMDD adolescents abnormally process socioemotional feedback (being accepted versus rejected by same-aged peers), a well-established trigger of adolescent MDD. Specifically, Aim 2 will test whether remMDD adolescents exhibit a reduced Late Positive Potential [LPP]), an ERP indexing emotional encoding, following positive social feedback from faux peers during a peer evaluation task. Third, using an innovative smartphone app, Aim 3 will collect multiple indicators of digital communication regarding the structure of adolescents’ digital social network (i.e., size of the network; frequency of communication) and sentiment of the communication with their digital social network (i.e., coding sentiment from their texts, social media posts); allowing us to test whether remMDD adolescents exhibit abnormal digital communication. Last, we will follow adolescents for 1-year to determine whether processing of nonverbal information, social feedback, and digital communication predict the escalation of depression symptoms and MDD relapse. Further, supervised machine learning will explore which social communication deficit(s) predict symptoms or MDD relapse, and whether these social processes predict outcomes independent of (or interaction with) other established predictors of relapse (e.g., stressful life events). In summary, the project has the promise to identify social process that contribute to recurrent depression, which, ultimately, will lead to innovative treatment approaches.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $728,902 )
2025	2025	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	5	6/25/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$728,902
2025	2023	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	1/17/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
2025	2023	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	4	6/25/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $728,902

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2024	2023	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	3/21/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $730,734 )
2023	2023	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	4	9/26/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
2023	2023	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE INC	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	4	2/2/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$73,074
2023	2023	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE INC	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	11/2/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$657,660
														Subtotal = $730,734

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $733,321 )
2022	2022	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE INC	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	10/22/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$659,989
2022	2022	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE INC	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	3	5/23/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$73,332
														Subtotal = $733,321

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $720,319 )
2021	2021	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	2	4/14/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$72,032
2021	2021	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	2	10/28/2020	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$648,287
														Subtotal = $720,319

Issue Date FY: 2020 ( Subtotal = $814,533 )
2020	2020	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	1	3/11/2020	NEW	$76,802
2020	2020	RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC.	1051 RIVERSIDE DR	NEW YORK	NY	10032	NEW YORK	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	1	12/3/2019	NEW	$737,731
														Subtotal = $814,533

Grand Total All Awards = $3,727,809

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Social Processing Deficits in Remitted Adolescent Depression

Award Number: R01MH119771

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 12/01/2019

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2026

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