Neural and cardiac correlates of sensitivity to lost opportunities: The role of self-critical rumination and depressive symptoms

Individuals prone to rumination and depressive symptoms often experience maladaptive, repetitive regret when confronted with lost opportunities. Understanding underlying neurobehavioral mechanisms is crucial for clarifying how these vulnerabilities might foster affective disorders. This study used a sequential risk-taking task to investigate how these vulnerabilities modulate behavioral, neural (Late Positive Potential, LPP), and cardiac responses to outcomes. Ninety-two female subjects received trial-by-trial feedback, yielding optimal, suboptimal (mixed gain/loss), and nonoptimal (total loss) outcomes. Higher rumination and depressive symptoms predicted greater behavioral sensitivity to lost opportunities. For suboptimal outcomes, the positive association between sensitivity and LPP amplitude was stronger in individuals with higher vulnerability, whereas for nonoptimal outcomes, the positive association between sensitivity and LPP amplitude was only present in those with extremely high rumination. Together, these findings suggest that for vulnerable individuals, a heightened sensitivity to lost opportunities manifests as a neural signature of sustained, maladaptive elaboration on partially or fully negative choice outcomes. In contrast, for individuals with low vulnerabilities, greater sensitivity predicted a reduced LPP for nonoptimal outcomes, a possible signature of adaptive disengagement from failure. Physiologically, regardless of vulnerability, greater sensitivity predicted increased cardiac acceleration following suboptimal outcomes, suggesting heightened autonomic arousal, though this effect only survived multiple-comparison correction in the model with rumination. In conclusion, sensitivity to lost opportunities seems not inherently maladaptive; its link to neural processing is shaped by clinical vulnerabilities. This altered processing may explain how these vulnerabilities sustain biased thinking, offering a transdiagnostic marker and targets for intervention against maladaptive regret.