Differential neural sensitivity to social inclusion and exclusion in adolescents in foster care.

Objectives: Adolescents in foster care may exhibit differential patterns of brain functioning that contribute to their pervasive socioemotional challenges. However, there has been limited investigation of implicated neural processes, particularly in the social domain. Thus, the current study investigated neural responses to exclusionary and inclusionary peer interactions in adolescents in foster-care.

Feeling left out or just surprised? Neural correlates of social exclusion and overinclusion in adolescence.

Social belonging is an important human drive that influences mood and behavior. Neural responses to social exclusion are well-characterized, but the specificity of these responses to processing rejection-related affective distress is unknown. The present study compares neural responses to exclusion and overinclusion, a condition that similarly violates fairness expectations but does not involve rejection, with a focus on implications for models of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI) function.

Puberty and the human brain: Insights into adolescent development.

Alongside the exponential flourish of research on age-related trajectories of human brain development during childhood and adolescence in the past two decades, there has been an increase in the body of work examining the association between pubertal development and brain maturation. This review systematically examines empirical research on puberty-related structural and functional brain development in humans, with the aim of identifying convergent patterns of associations. We emphasize longitudinal studies, and discuss pervasive but oft-overlooked methodological issues that may be contributing to inconsistent findings and hindering progress (e.

Novel insights from the Yellow Light Game: Safe and risky decisions differentially impact adolescent outcome-related brain function.

Changes across the span of adolescence in the adolescent reward system are thought to increase the tendency to take risks. While developmental differences in decision and outcome-related reward processes have been studied extensively, existing paradigms have largely neglected to measure how different types of decisions modulate reward-related outcome processes. We modified an existing decision-making paradigm (the Stoplight Task; Chein et al.

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.

The effect of social rank feedback on risk taking and associated reward processes in adolescent girls.

The onset of adolescence is associated with an increased tendency to engage in risky behaviors and a developmental shift toward peers that contributes to increased prioritization for learning about and achieving social status. There is relatively little understanding about the specific links between these adolescent-typical phenomena, particularly regarding their neural underpinnings. Based on existing models that suggest the role of puberty in promoting adolescent status-seeking and risk-taking tendencies, we investigated the relation of pubertal hormones with behavioral and neural responses to status-relevant social information in the context of risk taking.

Risky decision-making in adolescent girls: The role of pubertal hormones and reward circuitry.

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by a greater tendency to take risks. While the adult literature has shown that sex steroids influence reward-related brain functioning and risk taking, research on the role of these hormones during puberty is limited. In this study, we examined the relation between pubertal hormones and adolescent risk taking using a probabilistic decision-making task.

A Neural Correlate of Strategic Exploration at the Onset of Adolescence.

The onset of adolescence is associated with an increase in the behavioral tendency to explore and seek novel experiences. However, this exploration has rarely been quantified, and its neural correlates during this period remain unclear. Previously, activity within specific regions of the rostrolateral PFC (rlPFC) in adults has been shown to correlate with the tendency for exploration.

A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of reward-related brain activation: effects of age, pubertal stage, and reward sensitivity.

Neurobiological models suggest that adolescents are driven by an overactive ventral striatum (VS) response to rewards that may lead to an adolescent increase in risk-taking behavior. However, empirical studies showed mixed findings of adolescents' brain response to rewards. In this study, we aimed to elucidate the relationship between reward-related brain activation and risky decision-making.

Testosterone levels correspond with increased ventral striatum activation in response to monetary rewards in adolescents.

Risk taking is an integral part of learning and development, particularly during adolescence the prevalence of risky behaviors peak. It is hypothesized that the tendency to take risks is related to pubertal maturation, where there is interplay between gonadal hormones, the neural mechanisms that underlie affective (e.g.

Social exclusion and punishment of excluders: neural correlates and developmental trajectories.

Social exclusion is a distressing experience and can result in a reduction of prosocial behavior. In this fMRI study we examined the neural networks involved in social exclusion and subsequent fairness considerations across adolescent development. Participants from 3 age groups (10-12, 14-16 and 19-21 year olds) participated in the study and performed two tasks; first, participants played Cyberball to induce feelings of social inclusion and exclusion, followed by a Dictator game in which participants were asked to divide coins between themselves and the players who previously included or excluded them.

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

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).