Reward Processing in Novelty Seekers: A Transdiagnostic Psychiatric Imaging Biomarker

Abstract Background Dysfunctional reward processing is implicated in multiple mental disorders. Novelty seeking (NS) assesses preference for seeking novel experiences, which is linked to sensitivity to reward environmental cues. Methods A 14-year-olds adolescent subset (IMAGEN) with top 20% ranked high-NS scores was used to identify high-NS associated multimodal components by supervised fusion. These features were then used to longitudinal predict five different risk scales for the same and unseen subjects in 19-year-olds (within IMAGEN, n ≈ 1100), and even for the corresponding symptom scores of five types of patient cohorts (non-IMAGEN), including drinking (n=313), smoking (n=104), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, n=320), major depressive disorders (MDD, n=81) and schizophrenia (SZ, n=147), as well as classify among patients. Results Multimodal biomarkers, including prefrontal cortex, striatum, amygdala and hippocampus, associated with high-NS in 14-year-olds adolescents were identified. The prediction models built on these features are able to longitudinally predict five different risk scales including alcohol drinking, smoking, hyperactivity, depression, and psychosis for the same and unseen 19-year-olds adolescents, and even predict the corresponding symptom scores of five types of patient cohorts. Furthermore, the identified reward-related multimodal features can classify among ADHD, MDD and SZ with an accuracy of 87.2%. Conclusions 1) Adolescents with higher NS scores may reveal brain alterations in the reward related system, implicating potential higher risk for subsequent development of multiple disorders. 2) The identified high-NS associated multimodal reward related signatures may serve as a transdiagnostic neuroimaging biomarker to predict disease risks or severity.