Delay discounting in adolescence depends on whom you wait for: Evidence from a functional neuroimaging study.

With age, adolescents increasingly demonstrate the ability to forgo immediate, smaller rewards in favor of larger delayed rewards, indicating reduced delay discounting. Adolescence is also a time of social reorientation, where decisions not only involve weighing immediate against future outcomes, but also consequences for self versus those for others. In this functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, we examined the neural correlates of immediate and delayed reward choices where the delayed outcomes could benefit self, friends, or unknown others.

Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS): A team science effort to predict societal trajectories in adolescence and young adulthood.

Our society faces a great diversity of opportunities for youth. The 10-year Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS) program has the long-term goal to understand which combination of measures best predict societal trajectories, such as school success, mental health, well-being, and developing a sense of belonging in society. Our leading hypothesis is that self-regulation is key to how adolescents successfully navigate the demands of contemporary society.

The Effect of Relative Pubertal Maturation and Perceived Popularity on Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety in Adolescent Boys and Girls.

Research has shown that adolescents - particularly girls - who mature relatively early often experience more internalizing problems. This effect is thought to be partially driven by psychosocial mechanisms, but previous research based relative pubertal maturation on complete samples or population standards, instead of considering the adolescents' direct peer environment. In the current study the level of adolescents' pubertal development was assessed relative to their classmates in order to examine relative pubertal maturation.

Social network position, trust behavior, and neural activity in young adolescents.

Our social interactions take place within numerous social networks, in which our relationships with others define our position within these networks. In this study, we examined how the centrality of positions within social networks was associated with trust behavior and neural activity in 49 adolescents (M = 12.8 years, SD = 0.

Adolescent development: From neurobiology to psychopathology.

Adolescence is a time of major psychological development in the cognitive, affective, and social domains. Development in these domains can also show interactions with each other. One way in which these interactions between these domains become apparent is in the form of risk-taking behavior in adolescence.

Information about others' choices selectively alters risk tolerance and medial prefrontal cortex activation across adolescence and young adulthood.

Adolescence is associated with major changes in the cognitive, emotional and social domains. One domain in which these processes intersect is decision-making. Previous research has shown that individuals' attitudes towards risk and ambiguity shape their decision-making, and information about others' choices can influence individuals' decisions.

Majority and popularity effects on norm formation in adolescence.

Personal norms consist of individuals' attitudes about the appropriateness of behaviour. These norms guide adolescents' behaviour in countless domains that are fundamental for their social functioning and well-being. Peers are known to have a marked influence on adolescent risk-taking and prosocial behaviour, but little is known about how peers shape personal norms underlying those behaviours.

Social Cognition and Friendships in Adolescents With Autistic-Like Experiences and Psychotic-Like Experiences.

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and schizophrenia spectrum conditions (SSC) are both characterized by changes in social-cognitive functioning. Less is known about the overlap and the differences in social-cognitive functioning when comparing individuals with subclinical levels of ASC and SSC, while studies in non-clinical samples have the benefit of avoiding confounds that are present in clinical groups. Therefore, we first examined how autistic-like experiences, positive psychotic-like experiences and the co-occurrence of both correlated with the performance on an extensive battery of social cognition tasks in young adolescents.

Friendship stability in adolescence is associated with ventral striatum responses to vicarious rewards.

An important task for adolescents is to form and maintain friendships. In this three-wave biannual study, we used a longitudinal neuroscience perspective to examine the dynamics of friendship stability. Relative to childhood and adulthood, adolescence is marked by elevated ventral striatum activity when gaining self-serving rewards.

Developmental Maturation of the Precuneus as a Functional Core of the Default Mode Network.

Efforts to map the functional architecture of the developing human brain have shown that connectivity between and within functional neural networks changes from childhood to adulthood. Although prior work has established that the adult precuneus distinctively modifies its connectivity during task versus rest states [Utevsky, A. V.

What lies beneath peer acceptance in adolescence? Exploring the role of Nucleus Accumbens responsivity to self-serving and vicarious rewards.

Peer relationships play an important role in adolescent social development. Adolescence is also a sensitive period for reward-related processing where Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) shows peak levels of activity. To investigate the role of reward-related neural processes in peer relationships, we scanned 31 adolescents (16 boys, 15 girls) from 12 to 17 years old and had their classmates rate their likability and dislikability.

Developmental patterns of change in the influence of safe and risky peer choices on risky decision-making.

Adolescents take more risks when peers monitor their behavior. However, it is largely unknown how different types of peer influence affect adolescent decision-making. In this study, we investigate how information about previous choices of peers differentially influences decision-making in adolescence and young adulthood.

Win for your kin: Neural responses to personal and vicarious rewards when mothers win for their adolescent children.

Mother-child relationships change considerably in adolescence, but it is not yet understood how mothers experience vicarious rewards for their adolescent children. In the current study, we investigated neural responses of twenty mothers winning and losing money for their best friend and for their adolescent child in a gambling task. During the task, functional neuroimaging data were acquired.

Development of Multifaceted Risk Taking and the Relations to Sex Steroid Hormones: A Longitudinal Study.

Risk taking is a multidimensional construct. It is currently unclear which aspects of risk-taking change most during adolescence and if/how sex hormones contribute to risk-taking tendencies. This study applied a longitudinal design with three time-points, separated by 2 years, in participants aged 8-29 years (670 observations).

Contributions of Reward Sensitivity to Ventral Striatum Activity Across Adolescence and Early Adulthood.

It was examined how ventral striatum responses to rewards develop across adolescence and early adulthood and how individual differences in state- and trait-level reward sensitivity are related to these changes. Participants (aged 8-29 years) were tested across three waves separated by 2 years (693 functional MRI scans) in an accelerated longitudinal design. The results confirmed an adolescent peak in reward-related ventral striatum, specifically nucleus accumbens, activity.

Neuroimaging of learning and development: improving ecological validity.

Modern neuroscience research, including neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has provided valuable insights that advanced our understanding of brain development and learning processes significantly. However, there is a lively discussion about whether and how these insights can be meaningful to the educational practice. One of the main challenges is the low ecological validity of neuroimaging studies, making it hard to translate neuroimaging findings to real-life learning situations.

Brain activation upon ideal-body media exposure and peer feedback in late adolescent girls.

Media's prevailing thin-body ideal plays a vital role in adolescent girls' body image development, but the co-occurring impact of peer feedback is understudied. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test media imagery and peer feedback combinations on neural activity related to thin-body ideals. Twenty-four healthy female late adolescents rated precategorized body sizes of bikini models (too thin or normal), directly followed by ostensible peer feedback (too thin or normal).

Longitudinal Changes in Social Brain Development: Processing Outcomes for Friend and Self.

Adolescence is an important time for social development during which friendships become more intimate and complex. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study we tested how outcomes for friends are processed on the neural level across adolescence. Participants between 8 and 27 years of age were tested twice with a 2-year difference between the first (N = 299) and second (N = 254) time points.

Amygdala-orbitofrontal connectivity predicts alcohol use two years later: a longitudinal neuroimaging study on alcohol use in adolescence.

This study tested the relation between cortical-subcortical functional connectivity and alcohol consumption in adolescents using an accelerated longitudinal design, as well as normative developmental patterns for these measures. Participants between ages 8 and 27 completed resting-state neuroimaging scans at two time points separated by two years (N = 274 at T1, N = 231 at T2). In addition, participants between ages 12 and 27 reported on recent and lifetime alcohol use (N = 193 at T1, N = 244 at T2).

What motivates adolescents? Neural responses to rewards and their influence on adolescents' risk taking, learning, and cognitive control.

Adolescence is characterized by pronounced changes in motivated behavior, during which emphasis on potential rewards may result in an increased tendency to approach things that are novel and bring potential for positive reinforcement. While this may result in risky and health-endangering behavior, it may also lead to positive consequences, such as behavioral flexibility and greater learning. In this review we will discuss both the maladaptive and adaptive properties of heightened reward-sensitivity in adolescents by reviewing recent cognitive neuroscience findings in relation to behavioral outcomes.

Peers and parents: a comparison between neural activation when winning for friends and mothers in adolescence.

Rewards reliably elicit ventral striatum activity. More recently studies have shown that vicarious rewards elicit similar activation. Ventral striatum responses to rewards for self peak during adolescence.

Nucleus accumbens response to rewards and testosterone levels are related to alcohol use in adolescents and young adults.

During adolescence there is a normative increase in risk-taking behavior, which is reflected in, for example, increases in alcohol consumption. Prior research has demonstrated a link between testosterone and alcohol consumption, and between testosterone and neural responses to rewards. Yet, no study to date tested how testosterone levels and neural responses to rewards relate to and predict individual differences in alcohol use.

Longitudinal changes in adolescent risk-taking: a comprehensive study of neural responses to rewards, pubertal development, and risk-taking behavior.

Prior studies have highlighted adolescence as a period of increased risk-taking, which is postulated to result from an overactive reward system in the brain. Longitudinal studies are pivotal for testing these brain-behavior relations because individual slopes are more sensitive for detecting change. The aim of the current study was twofold: (1) to test patterns of age-related change (i.

Reappraisal facilitates extinction in healthy and socially anxious individuals.

Background And Objectives: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) combines cognitive restructuring with exposure to feared stimuli in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Due to the complexities of cognition–emotion interactions during ongoing CBT, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear, which hinders treatment optimization.

Methods: We created a laboratory analogue by combining reappraisal, a key ingredient of cognitive restructuring, with Pavlovian conditioning, a key ingredient in behavioral treatments.