Background: Social rewards (e.g., social feedback, praise, and social interactions) are fundamental to social learning and relationships across the life span. Exposure to social rewards is linked to activation in key brain regions, that are impaired in major depression. This is the first summary of neuroimaging literature on social reward processing in depressed and healthy individuals.

Method: We screened 409 studies and identified 25 investigating task-based fMRI activation during exposure to social stimuli in depressed and healthy populations across the lifespan. We conducted a systematic review followed by an Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) analysis of three main contrasts: a) positive social feedback vs. neutral stimuli; b) negative social feedback vs. neutral stimuli; c) positive vs. negative social feedback. We also compared activation patterns in depressed versus healthy controls.

Results: Systematic review revealed that social rewards elicit increased activation in subcortical reward regions (NAcc, amygdala, ventral striatum, thalamus) in healthy and depressed individuals; and decreased activation in prefrontal reward regions (medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex) among depressed persons. Our meta-analysis showed, in both depressed and healthy individuals, increased cluster activation of the putamen and caudate in response to negative social stimuli vs. positive stimuli. We also found increased cluster activation in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the medial frontal gyrus (MFG) in healthy controls vs. depressed individuals, in response to negative social stimuli.

Conclusions: Processing of social stimuli elicits activation of key brain regions involved in affective and social information processing. Interventions for depression can increase social reward responsivity to improve outcomes.