Neural Substrates of Counterfactual Emotions After Risky Decisions in Late Adolescents and Young Adults

Do adolescents use choice to learn about their preferences? Development of value refinement and its associations with depressive symptoms in adolescence

Independent decision making requires forming stable estimates of one's preferences. We assessed whether adolescents learn about their preferences through choice deliberation and whether depressive symptoms disrupt this process. Adolescents aged 11-18 (N = 214; participated 2021-22; Female: 53.9%; White/Black/Asian/Mixed/Arab or Latin American: 26/21/19/9/8%) rated multiple activities, chose between pairs of activities and re-rated those activities. As expected, overall, participants uprated chosen and downrated unchosen activities (dz = .20). This value refinement through choice was not evident in younger participants but emerged across adolescence. Contrary to our predictions, depressive symptoms were associated with greater value refinement. Despite this, more depressed adolescents reported lower value certainty and choice confidence. The cognitive processes through which choice deliberation shapes preference develop over adolescence, and are disrupted in depression.

The road not taken: Common and distinct neural correlates of regret and relief

Humans anticipate and evaluate both obtained and counterfactual outcomes - outcomes that could have been had an alternate decision been taken - and experience associated emotions of regret and relief. Although many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have examined the neural correlates of these emotions, there is substantial heterogeneity in their results. We conducted coordinate-based ALE and network-based ANM meta-analysis of fMRI studies of experienced regret and relief to examine commonalities and differences in their neural correlates. Regionally, we observed that the experience of both regret and relief was associated with greater activation in the right ventral striatum (VS), which is implicated in tracking reward prediction error. At the network level, regret and relief shared the reward-sensitive mesocorticolimbic network with preferential activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) for regret processing and medial cingulate cortex (MCC) for relief processing. Our research identified shared and separable brain systems subserving regret and relief experience, which may inform the treatment of regret-related mood disorders.

Longitudinal trajectories of suicidal ideation and attempts in adolescents with psychiatric disorders in Chile: study protocol

INTRODUCTION

Adolescent suicide is a worldwide public health problem, being the second and the third leading cause of death in the 15-29 and the 15-19 age groups, respectively. Among adolescents, it is estimated that for every suicide, there are 100-200 suicide attempts. Although 79% of suicides in the world occur in low/middle-income countries, most of scientific evidence comes from high-income and low-risk countries. In recent years, adolescent suicide rates have steadily increased in Chile. Deaths caused by self-harm increased by 220% in the population aged 10-19 years between 2000 and 2015. The Maule Region is one of the regions of Chile with the highest levels of suicide among those aged 15 and 19 years old. The objective of this study is to evaluate the trajectories of ideation and suicidal attempts in adolescents with psychiatric disorders treated within the public health system of the Maule Region, Chile, based on different clinical, psychological and neuropsychological factors.

METHOD

A prospective naturalistic study of a clinical sample of adolescents under psychiatric treatment in the Maule Region, Chile. Adolescents will be evaluated using a thorough protocol that includes suicide-related clinical variables. The study seeks to establish patterns of change in the trajectories of ideation and suicide attempts among adolescents.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

Ethical approval was granted by the Scientific Ethics Committee of the Universidad Católica del Maule in Chile. This protocol was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov. The results of this study will be disseminated to health centres through executive reports and feedback sessions. In addition, the most relevant findings will be presented in scientific articles, conferences and seminars open to the community.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

NCT04635163.

Adolescent Brain Development: Implications for Understanding Risk and Resilience Processes Through Neuroimaging Research

This special section focuses on research that utilizes neuroimaging methods to examine the impact of social relationships and socioemotional development on adolescent brain function. Studies include novel neuroimaging methods that further our understanding of adolescent brain development. This special section has a particular focus on how study findings add to our understanding of risk and resilience. In this introduction to the special section, we discuss the role of neuroimaging in developmental science and provide a brief review of neuroimaging methods. We present key themes that are covered in the special section articles including: (1) emerging methods in developmental neuroscience, (2) emotion-cognition interaction, and (3) the role of social relationships in brain function. We conclude our introduction with future directions for integrating developmental neuroscience into the study of adolescence, and highlight key points from the special section's commentaries which include information on the landmark Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.

Broadening the Impact of Developmental Neuroscience on the Study of Adolescence

Having been a significance source of the renewed interested in the adolescent period, developmental neuroscience now needs to build upon its achievements to date and expand in several areas in order to broaden its impact upon the field. Addressing both typical and atypical development, examining the interaction between brain development and the social environment, studying change over time, and including attention to population diversity can help to produce a truly integrative science of adolescent development. The papers in the special section provide nice examples of how developmental neuroscience can make such expansions and continue to contribute to the field in the years to come.