Intergenerational Transmission of Depression Risk and the Developing Brain

Parental depression is a well-established risk factor for depression in offspring. This intergenerational transmission involves a diverse array of mechanisms, both familial and environmental, working at different levels to increase depression in offspring. To identify modifiable mechanisms for depression among this heterogeneity, recent work has turned to neurobiological measures as more proximal indicators of risk. Indeed, there is emerging evidence that one point of convergence for multiple proposed mechanisms of intergenerational transmission may be the effect they have on the developing brain. In this narrative review, we discuss research that has examined associations between familial and environmental influences and offspring brain function, focusing specifically on direct neural measures of cognitive control, motivation, and affective processing. We first survey evidence indicating that genes, gestational stress, parenting, and stress exposure are associated with alterations in these neural measures from infancy to young adulthood. We then present a preliminary conceptual model outlining the roles of altered neural indices of cognitive control, motivation, and affective processing in pathways from parental depression to offspring depression and discuss future research avenues addressing limitations of the existing research. Finally, we conclude by discussing the potential of this research to inform the development of targeted preventive interventions aimed at disrupting the intergenerational transmission of depression.