Not just social sensitivity: Adolescent neural suppression of social feedback during risk taking

Revisiting adolescence as a sensitive period for sociocultural processing

Waves of research and public discourse have characterized adolescence as periods of developmental risk and opportunity. Underlying this discussion is the recognition that adolescence is a period of major biological and social transition when experience may have an outsized effect on development. This article updates and expands upon prior work suggesting that adolescence may be a sensitive period for sociocultural processing specifically. By integrating evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience, we identify how trajectories of social and neurobiological development may relate to adolescents' ability to adapt to and learn from their social environments. However, we also highlight gaps in the literature, including challenges in attributing developmental change to adolescent experiences. We discuss the importance of better understanding variability in biology (e.g., pubertal development) and cultural environments, as well as distinguishing between sensitive periods and periods of heightened sensitivity. Finally, we look toward future directions and translational implications of this research.

Friendship changes differentially predict neural correlates of decision-making for friends across adolescence

Adolescents' peer world is highly dynamic with constant dissolution of old friendships and formation of new ones. Though many of adolescents' risky decisions involve their peers, little is known about how adolescents' ever-changing friendships shape their ability to make these peer-involving risky decisions, particularly adaptive ones, and whether this association shifts over time. In a 5-wave longitudinal fMRI study, 173 adolescents (at wave 1: Mage = 12.8, SDage = 0.52; range = 11.9-14.5) made risky choices to win money for their best friend. We assessed whether participants nominated the same or different best friend as their previous participation year (a total of 340 data points of friendship maintenance / change). In early adolescence, adolescents with the same best friend took more adaptive risks for that best friend than those with a different best friend. In late adolescence, however, adolescents with a different best friend took more adaptive risks for the new best friend than those with the same best friend. Further, the amygdala was differentially sensitive to friendship maintenance / change during these peer-involving adaptive risks across time. This study has implications for how stable and flexible peer landscapes differentially modulate social motivation and social decision-making over the course of adolescence.

Differential processing of risk and reward in delinquent and non-delinquent youth

The present study examined the behavioral and neural differences in risky decision-making between delinquent (n = 23) and non-delinquent (n = 27) youth ages 13-17 years (M = 16, SD = 0.97) in relation to reward processing. While undergoing functional neuroimaging, participants completed an experimental risk task wherein they received feedback about the riskiness of their behavior in the form of facial expressions that morphed from happy to angry. Behavioral results indicated that delinquent youth took fewer risks and earned fewer rewards on the task than non-delinquent youth. Results from whole-brain analyses indicated no group differences in sensitivity to punishments (i.e. angry faces), but instead showed that delinquent youth evinced greater neural tracking of reward outcomes (i.e. cash-ins) in regions including the ventral striatum and inferior frontal gyrus. While behavioral results show that delinquent youth were more risk-averse, the neural results indicated that delinquent youth were also more reward-driven, potentially suggesting a preference for immediate rewards. Results offer important insights into differential decision-making processes between delinquent and non-delinquent youth.

Intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network moderates adolescent susceptibility to negative and positive peer norms

Not all adolescents are equally susceptible to peer influence, and for some, peer influence exerts positive rather than negative effects. Using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, the current study examined how intrinsic functional connectivity networks associated with processing social cognitive and affective stimuli predict adolescents' (n = 87, ages 11-14 years) prosocial tendencies and risky behaviors in the context of positive and negative peer norms. We tested the moderating role of four candidate intrinsic brain networks-associated with mentalizing, cognitive control, motivational relevance, and affective salience-in peer influence susceptibility. Only intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network significantly moderated the association between peer norms and adolescent behavior above and beyond the other networks. Adolescents with high intrinsic connectivity within the affective salience network reported greater prosocial tendencies in contexts with more positive peer norms but greater risk-taking behavior in contexts with more negative peer norms. In contrast, peer norms were not associated with adolescent behavior for individuals with low affective salience within-network intrinsic connectivity. The mentalizing network, cognitive control network, and motivational relevance network were not associated with individual differences in peer influence susceptibility. This study identifies key neural mechanisms underlying differential susceptibility to positive and negative peer influence in early adolescence, with a particular emphasis on the role of affective salience over traditional mentalizing, regulatory, and motivational processes.

Social and Non-social Brain Areas in Risk Behaviour: The Role of Social Context

The human brain contains social areas that become active when interacting with another human. These are located in the ventral prefrontal and mediodorsal cortices, adjacent to areas involved in reward processing and cognitive control. Human behaviour is strongly influenced by the social context. This is particularly evident when observing greater risk propensity in the presence of a peer, particularly during adolescence and emerging adulthood. We explored the widely held view that enhanced risk propensity is the consequence of weak cognitive control. We used brain activity, estimated from EEG recordings in a sample of 114 emerging adult dyads whilst performing a risk perception task, to predict risk behaviour in a subsequent driving simulation task. Being with a peer reduced the ability to discriminate riskiness in images of traffic scenes, biased responses towards the perception of no-risk, and increased the rate of accidents in the driving simulation. Risk perception involved three sets of clusters showing activity only when being with a peer, only when being alone, and in both social contexts. Functional connectivity between the clusters accounted for the later driving simulation performance depending on the peer's presence. In the light of our findings, greater risk-taking, when a peer is present, seems to be triggered by the activation of a different, less efficient brain network for risk-processing.

Expectations of Social Consequences Impact Anticipated Involvement in Health-Risk Behavior During Adolescence

This study examined how individual differences in expectations of social consequences relate to individuals' expected involvement in health-risk behaviors (HRBs). A total of 122 adolescents (aged 11-17) reported their expected involvement in a number of risk behaviors and whether or not they expect to be liked more or less by engaging in the behavior: the expected social benefit. Higher perceived social benefit was associated with higher anticipated involvement in said behavior. This relationship was stronger for adolescents who reported a higher degree of peer victimization, supporting the hypothesis that experiencing victimization increases the social value of peer interactions. Findings suggest that adolescents incorporate expectations of social consequences when making decisions regarding their involvement in HRBs.

Modelling resilience in adolescence and adversity: a novel framework to inform research and practice

Recent conceptualisations of resilience have advanced the notion that it is a dynamic and multifaceted construct. However, its adaptive components, especially those forged by adversity, have not been fully realised, and its neurobiological and psychosocial underpinnings are yet to be meaningfully integrated. In part, this is because a developmental perspective is often neglected in the formulation of resilience. In this review, we consider the findings of resilience research, with a specific emphasis on the developmental period of adolescence. To bridge the gaps in our current understanding, we propose a model of resilience that is predicated on experiencing adversity. Specifically, our model provides a sophisticated insight into the components of resilience, which, together with intrinsic features, involves facilitation of, and skill acquisition via strengthening processes we term tempering and fortification. The model also points to the potential trajectories of adversity-driven resilience and forms the basis of a framework that allows for individual variance in resilience, and the identification of both neurobiological and psychosocial targets for prevention and therapeutic interventions.

Apples to apples? Neural correlates of emotion regulation differences between high- and low-risk adolescents

Adolescence has been noted as a period of increased risk taking. The literature on normative neurodevelopment implicates aberrant activation of affective and regulatory regions as key to inhibitory failures. However, many of these studies have not included adolescents engaging in high rates of risky behavior, making generalizations to the most at-risk populations potentially problematic. We conducted a comparative study of nondelinquent community (n = 24, mean age = 15.8 years, 12 female) and delinquent adolescents (n = 24, mean age = 16.2 years, 12 female) who completed a cognitive control task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, where behavioral inhibition was assessed in the presence of appetitive and aversive socioaffective cues. Community adolescents showed poorer behavioral regulation to appetitive relative to aversive cues, whereas the delinquent sample showed the opposite pattern. Recruitment of the inferior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, and tempoparietal junction differentiated community and high-risk adolescents, as delinquent adolescents showed significantly greater recruitment when inhibiting their responses in the presence of aversive cues, while the community sample showed greater recruitment when inhibiting their responses in the presence of appetitive cues. Accounting for behavioral history may be key in understanding when adolescents will have regulatory difficulties, highlighting a need for comparative research into normative and nonnormative risk-taking trajectories.

Model-based network discovery of developmental and performance-related differences during risky decision-making

Theories of adolescent neurodevelopment have largely focused on group-level descriptions of neural changes that help explain increases in risk behavior that are stereotypical of the teen years. However, because these models are concerned with describing the "average" individual, they can fail to account for important individual or within-group variability. New methodological developments now offer the possibility of accounting for both group trends and individual differences within the same modeling framework. Here we apply GIMME, a model-based approach which uses both group and individual-level information to construct functional connectivity maps, to investigate risky behavior and neural changes across development. Adolescents (N = 30, Mage = 13.22), young adults (N = 23, Mage = 19.19), and adults (N = 31, Mage = 43.93) completed a risky decision-making task during an fMRI scan, and functional networks were constructed for each individual. We took two subgrouping approaches: 1) a confirmatory approach where we searched for functional connections that distinguished between our a priori age categories, and 2) an exploratory approach where we allowed an unsupervised algorithm to sort individuals freely. Contrary to expectations, we show that age is not the most influence contributing to network configurations. The implications for developmental theories and methodologies are discussed.

Moderate social sensitivity in a risky context supports adaptive decision making in adolescence: evidence from brain and behavior

Adolescence is a time of increased social-affective sensitivity, which is often related to heightened health-risk behaviors. However, moderate levels of social sensitivity, relative to either low (social vacuum) or high levels (exceptionally attuned), may confer benefits as it facilitates effective navigation of the social world. The present fMRI study tested a curvilinear relationship between social sensitivity and adaptive decision-making. Participants (ages 12-16; N = 35) played the Social Analogue Risk Task, which measures participants' willingness to knock on doors in order to earn points. With each knock, the facial expression of the house's resident shifted from happy to somewhat angrier. If the resident became too angry, the door slammed and participants lost points. Social sensitivity was defined as the extent to which adolescents adjusted their risky choices based on shifting facial expressions. Results confirmed a curvilinear relationship between social sensitivity and self-reported adaptive decision-making at the behavioral and neural level. Moderate adolescent social sensitivity was modulated via heightened tracking of social cues in the temporoparietal junction, insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and related to adaptive decision-making. These findings suggest that social-affective sensitivity may positively impact outcomes in adolescence and have implications for interventions to help adolescents reach mature social goals into adulthood.