Adaptive Adolescent Flexibility: Neurodevelopment of Decision-making and Learning in a Risky Context

Research on adolescence has largely focused on the particular biological and neural changes that place teens at risk for negative outcomes linked to increases in sensation-seeking and risky behavior. However, there is a growing interest in the adaptive function of adolescence, with work highlighting the dual nature of adolescence as a period of potential risk and opportunity. We examined how behavioral and neural sensitivity to risk and reward varies as a function of age using the Balloon Analog Risk Task. Seventy-seven children and adolescents (ages 8–17 years) completed the Balloon Analog Risk Task during an fMRI session. Results indicate that adolescents show greater learning throughout the task. Furthermore, older participants showed increased neural responses to reward in the OFC and ventral striatum, increased activation to risk in the mid-cingulate cortex, as well as increased functional OFC–medial PFC coupling in both risk and reward contexts. Age-related changes in regional activity and interregional connectivity explain the link between age and increases in flexible learning. These results support the idea that adolescents’ sensitivity to risk and reward supports adaptive learning and behavioral approaches for reward acquisition

Failure to retreat: Blunted sensitivity to negative feedback supports risky behavior in adolescents

Decision-making processes rarely occur in isolation. Rather, representations are updated constantly based on feedback to past decisions and actions. However, previous research has focused on the reaction to feedback receipt itself, instead of examining how feedback information is integrated into future decisions. In the current study, we examined differential neural sensitivity during risk decisions following positive versus negative feedback in a risk-taking context, and how this differential sensitivity is linked to adolescent risk behavior. Fifty-eight adolescents (ages 13–17 years) completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) during an fMRI session and reported on their levels of risk-taking behavior. Results show that reduced medial PFC (mPFC) response following negative versus positive feedback is associated with fewer reductions in task-based risky decisions following negative feedback, as well as increased self-reported risk-taking behavior. These results suggest that reduced neural integration of negative feedback into during future decisions supports risky behavior, perhaps by discounting negative relative to positive feedback information when making subsequent risky decisions

Mother still knows best: Maternal influence uniquely modulates adolescent reward sensitivity during risk taking

Adolescent decision-making is highly sensitive to input from the social environment. In particular, adult and maternal presence influence adolescents to make safer decisions when encountered with risky scenarios. However, it is currently unknown whether maternal presence confers a greater advantage than mere adult presence in buffering adolescent risk taking. In the current study, 23 adolescents completed a risk-taking task during an fMRI scan in the presence of their mother and an unknown adult. Results reveal that maternal presence elicits greater activation in reward-related neural circuits when making safe decisions but decreased activation following risky choices. Moreover, adolescents evidenced a more immature neural phenotype when making risky choices in the presence of an adult compared to mother, as evidenced by positive functional coupling between the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex. Our results underscore the importance of maternal stimuli in bolstering adolescent decision-making in risky scenarios

Greater response variability in adolescents is associated with increased white matter development.

Adolescence is a period of learning, exploration, and continuous adaptation to fluctuating environments. Response variability during adolescence is an important, understudied, and developmentally appropriate behavior. The purpose of this study was to identify the association between performance on a dynamic risky decision making task and white matter microstructure in a sample of 48 adolescents (14-16 years). Individuals with the greatest response variability on the task obtained the widest range of experience with potential outcomes to risky choice. When compared with their more behaviorally consistent peers, adolescents with greater response variability rated real-world examples of risk taking behaviors as less risky via self-report. Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) were used to examine fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD). Greater FA in long-range, late-maturing tracts was associated with higher response variability. Greater FA and lower MD were associated with lower riskiness ratings of real-world risky behaviors. Results suggest that response variability and lower perceived risk attitudes of real-world risk are supported by neural maturation in adolescents

Love flows downstream: mothers’ and children’s neural representation similarity in perceiving distress of self and family

The current study aimed to capture empathy processing in an interpersonal context. Mother–adolescent dyads (N = 22) each completed an empathy task during fMRI, in which they imagined the target person in distressing scenes as either themselves or their family (i.e. child for the mother, mother for the child). Using multi-voxel pattern approach, we compared neural pattern similarity for the self and family conditions and found that mothers showed greater perceptual similarity between self and child in the fusiform face area (FFA), representing high self–child overlap, whereas adolescents showed significantly less self–mother overlap. Adolescents’ pattern similarity was dependent upon family relationship quality, such that they showed greater self–mother overlap with higher relationship quality, whereas mothers’ pattern similarity was independent of relationship quality. Furthermore, adolescents’ perceptual similarity in the FFA was associated with increased social brain activation (e.g. temporal parietal junction). Mediation analyses indicated that high relationship quality was associated with greater social brain activation, which was mediated by greater self–mother overlap in the FFA. Our findings suggest that adolescents show more distinct neural patterns in perceiving their own vs their mother’s distress, and such distinction is sensitive to mother–child relationship quality. In contrast, mothers’ perception for their own and child’s distress is highly similar and unconditional

Letting the good times roll: adolescence as a period of reduced inhibition to appetitive social cues

Given the spike in risky behaviors that accompanies adolescence, the need to examine the processes and contextual factors that influence disinhibition for adolescents is of great import. Using an emotionally salient cognitive control task, we examined how socially appetitive and aversive cues differentially affect behavioral inhibition across development. In Study 1 (N = 94, ages 8–30 years), we found that socially appetitive cues were particularly detrimental to inhibition, a finding driven by our adolescent sample. In Study 2 (N = 35, ages 12–17 years), we sought to explore the neural processes implicated in suboptimal inhibition during adolescence. Replicating our behavioral findings from Study 1, socially appetitive cues again caused detriments to inhibition compared with socially aversive cues. At the neural level, increased activation in affective regions (amygdala and ventral striatum) while viewing socially appetitive relative to socially aversive cues was correlated with increases in disinhibition. Furthermore, both whole-brain and functional connectivity analyses suggest recruitment of affective and social-detection networks (fusiform, bilateral temporoparietal junction) may account for the increased focus on appetitive relative to aversive cues. Together, our findings suggest that adolescents show detriments in inhibition to socially appetitive contexts, which is related to increased recruitment of affective and social processing neural regions

Families that fire together smile together: Resting state connectome similarity and daily emotional synchrony in parent-child dyads

Despite emerging evidence suggesting a biological basis to our social tiles, our understanding of the neural processes which link two minds is unknown. We implemented a novel approach, which included connectome similarity analysis using resting state intrinsic networks of parent-child dyads as well as daily diaries measured across 14 days. Intrinsic resting-state networks for both parents and their adolescent child were identified using independent component analysis (ICA). Results indicate that parents and children who had more similar RSN connectome also had more similar day-to-day emotional synchrony. Furthermore, dyadic RSN connectome similarity was associated with children's emotional competence, suggesting that being neurally in-tune with their parents confers emotional benefits. We provide the first evidence that dyadic RSN similarity is associated with emotional synchrony in what is often our first and most essential social bond, the parent-child relationship

Not Doomed to Repeat: Enhanced Medial Prefrontal Cortex Tracking of Errors Promotes Adaptive Behavior during Adolescence

Feedback information is one of the most powerful forces that promotes learning, providing guidance for changes to ongoing behavioral patterns. Previous examinations of feedback learning have largely relied on explicit feedback based on task performance. However, learning is not restricted to explicit feedback, and likely involves other forms of more-subtle feedback cues. One potential form of this kind of learning may involve internally-generated feedback in response to error commission. Whether this error-related response prompts neural and behavioral adaptation that overlap with, or are distinct from, those evoked by external feedback is largely unknown. In order to explore this gap, 55 adolescents completed a difficult behavioral inhibition task designed to elicit relatively high rates of error commission during an fMRI session. We examined neural adaptation following accumulating errors (i.e. internally-generated negative feedback events) at the group level, as well as the impact of individual differences in error tracking on overall task performance. Group effects show that mPFC activation tracks accumulating errors, however, reduced tracking of errors is associated with greater total false alarms. These findings suggest that increased mPFC integration of error-related feedback is beneficial for task performance, and in concert with previous findings, suggests a domain-general role for mPFC integration of negative feedback

Ventral striatum activation to prosocial rewards predicts longitudinal declines in adolescent risk taking

AbstractAdolescence is a period of intensified emotions and an increase in motivated behaviors and passions. Evidence from developmental neuroscience suggests that this heightened emotionality occurs, in part, due to a peak in functional reactivity to rewarding stimuli, which renders adolescents more oriented toward reward-seeking behaviors. Most prior work has focused on how reward sensitivity may create vulnerabilities, leading to increases in risk taking. Here, we test whether heightened reward sensitivity may potentially be an asset for adolescents when engaged in prosocial activities. Thirty-two adolescents were followed over a one-year period to examine whether ventral striatum activation to prosocial rewards predicts decreases in risk taking over a year. Results show that heightened ventral striatum activation to prosocial stimuli relates to longitudinal declines in risk taking. Therefore, the very same neural region that has conferred vulnerability for adolescent risk taking may also be protective against risk taking