Neurophysiological Markers Related to Negative Self-referential Processing Differentiate Adolescent Suicide Ideators and Attempters

Grace O Allison; Erik M Benau; Steven Asbaghi; David Pagliacco; Jeremy G Stewart; Randy P Auerbach

doi:10.1016/j.bpsgos.2021.04.001

Neurophysiological Markers Related to Negative Self-referential Processing Differentiate Adolescent Suicide Ideators and Attempters

Biol Psychiatry Glob Open Sci. 2021 Apr 20;1(1):16-27. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2021.04.001. eCollection 2021 Jun.

Authors

Grace O Allison¹, Erik M Benau¹, Steven Asbaghi¹, David Pagliacco¹, Jeremy G Stewart², Randy P Auerbach^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, New York.
² Department of Psychology and Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
³ Division of Clinical Developmental Neuroscience, Sackler Institute, New York, New York.

Abstract

Background: Adolescent suicide is a major public health concern, and presently, there is a limited understanding of the neurophysiological correlates of suicidal behaviors. Cognitive models of suicide indicate that negative views of the self are related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and this study investigated whether behavioral and neural correlates of self-referential processing differentiate suicide ideators from recent attempters.

Methods: Adolescents with depression reporting current suicidal ideation and no lifetime suicide attempts (suicide ideators, n = 30) and past-year suicide attempts (recent attempters, n = 26) completed a self-referential encoding task while high-density electroencephalogram data were recorded. Behavioral analyses focused on negative processing bias (i.e., tendency to attribute negative information as being self-relevant) and drift rate (i.e., slope of reaction time and response type that corresponds to how quickly information is accumulated to make a decision about whether words are self-referent). Neurophysiological markers probing components reflecting early semantic monitoring (P2), engagement (early late positive potential), and effortful encoding (late late positive potential) also were tested.

Results: Adolescent suicide ideators and recent suicide attempters reported comparable symptom severity, suicide ideation, and mental disorders. Although there were no behavioral differences, compared with suicide ideators, suicide attempters exhibited greater P2 amplitudes for negative versus positive words, which may reflect enhanced attention and arousal in response to negative self-referential stimuli. There were no group differences for the early or late late positive potential.

Conclusions: Enhanced sensory arousal in response to negative stimuli-that is, attentional orienting to semantic, emotional, and self-relevant features-differentiates adolescent suicide attempters from ideators and thus may signal risk for suicidal behavior.

Keywords: Event-related potentials; Late positive potential; P2; Schemas.

Abstract

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