Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 51, Issue 1, 15 May 2010, Pages 345-355
NeuroImage

Adolescent risky decision-making: Neurocognitive development of reward and control regions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.02.038Get rights and content

Abstract

Recent models hypothesize that adolescents' risky behavior is the consequence of increased sensitivity to rewards in the ventral medial (VM) prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the ventral striatum (VS), paired with immature cognitive control abilities due to slow maturation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and lateral PFC. We tested this hypothesis with fMRI using a gambling task in which participants chose between Low-Risk gambles with a high probability of obtaining a small reward (1 Euro) and High-Risk gambles with a smaller probability of obtaining a higher reward (2, 4, 6, or 8 Euro). We examined neural responses during choice selection and outcome processing in participants from 4 age groups (pre-pubertal children, early adolescents, older adolescents and young adults). High-Risk choices increased with rewards for all ages, but risk-taking decreased with age for low reward gambles. The fMRI results confirmed that High-Risk choices were associated with activation in VMPFC, whereas Low-Risk choices were associated with activation in lateral PFC. Activation in dorsal ACC showed a linear decrease with age, whereas activation in VMPFC and VS showed an inverted U-shaped developmental pattern, with a peak in adolescence. In addition, behavioral differences in risk-taking propensity modulated brain activation in all age groups. These findings support the hypothesis that risky behavior in adolescence is associated with an imbalance caused by different developmental trajectories of reward and regulatory brain circuitry.

Section snippets

Participants

Fifty-eight healthy, right-handed volunteers were included in the study. To examine developmental changes across adolescence, we recruited participants from four age groups: thirteen pre-pubertal children (aged 8–10 years; 8 female; mean age 9.7, SD = .9 mean Tanner stage 1.83, SD = .72), fifteen pubertal adolescents (aged 12–14 years; 8 female; mean age 13.4, SD = .8 mean Tanner stage 3.13, SD = .99), fifteen post-pubertal adolescents (aged 16–17 years; 7 female; mean age = 17.1, SD = .7 mean Tanner stage

Risk-taking behavior and reaction times (RTs)

We submitted the percentage of High-Risk gambles to a repeated measures ANOVA with Age group as between subjects factor and Reward (2, 4, 6, and 8 Euro) as within subjects factor. Risk-taking increased when the reward at stake was higher (main effect Reward, F (3, 162) = 39.13, p < .001). On average, risk-taking did not differ between age groups (p = .51), but there was a significant Age group × Reward interaction (F (9, 162) = 2.57, p < .005) (see Fig. 1B). Follow-up ANOVAs for the age groups separately

Discussion

The main goal of this study was to test for two different patterns of functional brain development that have been proposed to account for adolescent risk-taking: an inverted U-shaped pattern for reward-related regions with a peak in adolescence, and a linear pattern for regions associated with cognitive control. Recent models of adolescent risk-taking have described risk-taking in adolescence as a consequence of these different developmental trajectories (Casey et al., 2008, Ernst et al., 2006,

Conclusion

In summary, the current findings demonstrate that brain regions implicated in reward processing and cognitive control in decision-making under risk follow distinct developmental trajectories. Reward-related regions show an increased sensitivity to rewards in adolescence and follow an inverted U-shaped developmental pattern, whereas cognitive control-related regions mature slowly and follow a linear development. In addition, patterns of activation in dorsal and ventral medial PFC are related to

Acknowledgments

Work by authors (E.A.C. and S.A.R.B.R.) is supported by Vidi grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

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