Neonatal striatal volume is associated with infant anhedonia

Anhedonia is increasingly recognized as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. New evidence demonstrates that anhedonia is present in infancy and early childhood. Structural variability in striatal regions involved in reward processing and pleasure seeking is concurrently linked to anhedonia, yet few studies have examined whether striatal differences presage anhedonia, and none have examined prospective associations before middle childhood. The present study examined whether neuroanatomical markers that confer risk for anhedonia can be detected as early as the neonatal period. Specifically, we tested whether the volume of striatal regions in neonates predicted the emergence of infant anhedonic behaviors at six months of age. Our sample included 89 neonates (47 females, 42 males) from the Care Project - a longitudinal cohort study of pregnant individuals and their children. Neonatal striatal volume (nucleus accumbens, putamen, and caudate) was assessed using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; Mage: 43 postconceptional weeks). Anhedonic behaviors were measured using the Infant Hedonic/Anhedonic Processing Index (HAPI-Infant) at six months. Larger neonatal nucleus accumbens (right: β = 0.32, p = .003; left: β = 0.22, p = .04) and putamen (right: β = 0.29, p = .03; left: β = 0.28, p = .04) volume predicted more anhedonic behaviors at six months, covarying for intracranial volume, postconceptional age at scan, sex at birth, and birth weight percentile. This study demonstrates that neonatal striatal volume is associated with anhedonia in infancy and provides the first evidence that markers of vulnerability to anhedonia can be detected in neonates.