Reward reactivity as a buffer against negative mental health consequences of pandemic-related stress: a preregistered analysis in the Human Connectome Project in Development

The COVID-19 pandemic presented numerous novel stressors to youth which have been associated with worsening mental health. Previous work has shown that individuals with high reward sensitivity show resilience in the face of individualized stressors. Here, we sought to investigate whether individuals with high reward sensitivity prior to pandemic onset would be resilient to the community-level stressor of the pandemic. Sensitivity to reward was defined here as neural activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and striatum for wins as compared to losses in a reward-based task. We used data from the Human Connectome Project in Development collected before the pandemic onset, and follow-up data which was collected from the same participants during the pandemic. Activity in the left vmPFC moderated the association between pandemic-related stressors and internalizing psychopathology. Although those with low reward sensitivity showed a positive association between exposure to stressors and psychopathology, those with high sensitivity to reward did not show increased symptoms with increased stressors. We found no effect of activity in the striatum or right vmPFC on the association between stressors and psychopathology. These findings add to a growing literature highlighting reward sensitivity, measured prior to stressor onset, as a source of stress resilience.