Social and monetary rewards in children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

MARIA LUZ GONZALEZ GADEA; MARIANO SIGMAN; ALEXIA RATAZZI; FACUNDO MANES; AGUSTÍN IBÁÑEZ

Congreso; Society for Social Neuroscience(S4SN)Annual Meeting; 2015

Background: Emerging approaches of decision making propose that a shared encoding of monetary and social rewards is involved in the development of both monetary and social decisions. We tested this hypothesis in typically development children, and subjects with different profile of deficits in these processes: ADHD and ASD children. Methods: We monitored brain dynamics of 65 subjects (8-15 years-old) who had ADHD or ASD or were control participants via high density-electroencephalography while participants performed monetary decision task (Iowa gambling task) and social decision making paradigm (prisoner?s dilemma game). We analyzed the feedback error-related negativity (fERN) and estimated its source activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Results: Typically developing children exhibited fERN modulation and AAC source activation for both monetary (loss>win) and social choices (betray>cooperate). Remarkably, although cooperation meant more losses for participants, betrayal decisions generated higher fERN responses. ADHD subjects showed absent fERN modulation and reduced ACC task-related activation for both decision task. ASD subjects exhibited normal neural markers for monetary choices (loss>win) and abnormal processing of social decisions: cooperation generated higher fERN responses and ACC activation than betrayal choices. Conclusion: Our results suggest that monetary and social decisions induce similar activity in the brain value system. Difficulties in this system would affect social choices, as it was the case of ADHD children, while abnormalities in social decision making could arise without deficits in basic reward processing, as what happen for ASD children. These results offer insights to understand the neurocognitive mechanism underlying typical and atypical development of decision making.[Grants from CONICYT/FONDECYT Regular (1130920/1140114); PICT (2012-0412/2012-1309), CONICET, and the INECO Foundation]