ORIGINAL ARTICLE Disrupted Reinforcement Learning and Maladaptive Behavior in Women With a History of Childhood Sexual Abuse A High-Density Event-Related Potential Study

Importance: Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been associated with psychopathology, particularly major de-pressive disorder (MDD), and high-risk behaviors. De-spite the epidemiological data available, the mecha-nisms underlying these maladaptive outcomes remain poorly understood. Objective:We examinedwhether a history of CSA, par-ticularly in conjunction with a past episode of MDD, is associated with behavioral and neural dysfunction in re-inforcement learning, and whether such dysfunction is linked to maladaptive behavior. Design: Participants completed a clinical evaluation and a probabilistic reinforcement task while 128-channel event-related potentials were recorded. Setting: Academic setting; participants recruited fro