Association Between Interleukin-6 and Striatal Prediction-Error Signals Following Acute Stress in Healthy Female Participants

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Michael T. Treadway, Emory University; Roee Admon, Harvard Medical School; Amanda R. Arulpragasam, Emory University; Malavika Mehta, Harvard Medical School; Samuel Douglas, Harvard Medical School; Gordana Vitaliano, Harvard Medical School; David P. Olson, Harvard Medical School; Jessica A. Cooper, Emory University; Diego A. Pizzagalli, Harvard Medical School
• Language: English
• Date: 2017-10-15
• Publisher: Elsevier: 12 months
• Publication Version: Author Accepted Manuscript (After Peer Review)
• Copyright Statement: © 2017 Society of Biological Psychiatry
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.02.1183
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Biological Psychiatry
• ISSN: 0006-3223
• Volume: 82
• Issue: 8
• Start Page: 570
• End Page: 577
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was support by the National Institutes of Mental Health (R01 and R37 MH068376, MH068376-09S1 to DAP). MTT was supported by K99/R00MH102355 and R01MH108605. RA was supported a Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator award, respectively.
• Keywords: Female; Saliva; Corpus Striatum; Reward prediction error; Stress, Psychological; Analysis of Variance; Models, Statistical; Hydrocortisone; Regression Analysis; Oxygen; Reinforcement (Psychology); Ventral striatum; Healthy Volunteers; Stress; Reinforcement learning; Visual Analog Scale; Follow-Up Studies; Inflammation; Time Factors; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Humans; Interleukin-6; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
• Research Categories: Psychology, Personality; Psychology, General

Abstract

Background: Stress is widely known to alter behavioral responses to rewards and punishments. It is believed that stress may precipitate these changes through modulation of corticostriatal circuitry involved in reinforcement learning and motivation, although the intervening mechanisms remain unclear. One candidate is inflammation, which can rapidly increase following stress and can disrupt dopamine-dependent reward pathways. Methods: Here, in a sample of 88 healthy female participants, we first assessed the effect of an acute laboratory stress paradigm on levels of plasma interleukin-6 (IL-6), a cytokine known to be both responsive to stress and elevated in depression. In a second laboratory session, we examined the effects of a second laboratory stress paradigm on reward prediction error (RPE) signaling in the ventral striatum. Results: We show that individual differences in stress-induced increases in IL-6 (session 1) were associated with decreased ventral striatal RPE signaling during reinforcement learning (session 2), though there was no main effect of stress on RPE. Furthermore, changes in IL-6 following stress predicted intraindividual variability in perceived stress during a 4-month follow-up period. Conclusions: Taken together, these data identify a novel link between IL-6 and striatal RPEs during reinforcement learning in the context of acute psychological stress, as well as future appraisal of stressful life events.