Connecting Theory and Methods in Adolescent Brain Research

100 days of Adolescence: Elucidating Externalizing Behaviors Through the Daily Assessment of Inhibitory Control

Inhibitory control is a transdiagnostic risk factor for externalizing behaviors, particularly during adolescence. Despite advances in understanding links between inhibitory control and externalizing behaviors across youth on average, significant questions remain about how these links play out in the day-to-day lives of individual adolescents. The goals of the current study were to: (1) validate a novel 100-occasion measure of inhibitory control; (2) assess links between day-to-day fluctuations in inhibitory control and individual differences in externalizing behaviors; and (3) illustrate the potential of intensive longitudinal studies for person-specific analyses of adolescent externalizing behaviors. Participants were 106 youth (57.5% female, Mage = 13.34 years; SDage = 1.92) who completed a virtual baseline session followed by 100 daily surveys, including an adapted Stroop Color Word task designed to assess inhibitory control. Results suggested that the novel task was generally reliable and valid, and that inhibitory control fluctuated across days in ways that were meaningfully associated with individual differences in baseline impulsive behaviors. Results of illustrative personalized analyses suggested that inhibitory control had more influence in the daily networks of adolescents who used substances during the 100 days than in a matched set of adolescents who did not. This work marks a path forward in intensive longitudinal research by validating a novel inhibitory control measure, revealing that daily fluctuations in inhibitory control may be a unique construct broadly relevant to adolescent externalizing problems, and at the same time, highlighting that links between daily inhibitory control and impulsive behaviors are adolescent-specific.

Understanding patterns of heterogeneity in executive functioning during adolescence: Evidence from population-level data

Executive functioning (EF) is fundamental to positive development. Yet, little is known about how to best characterize constellations of EF skills that may inform disparate associations between EF and behavior during adolescence. In the current study, cross-validated latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to derive profiles of EF based on measures of inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility using data from 11,672 youth (52.2% male, mean age = 9.91 years) in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study. Four meaningful EF profiles emerged from the data representing Average EF, High EF, Low Inhibitory Control, and Low EF. Boys, youth from low-income households, and early developing youth were more likely to be in profiles distinguished by lower EF. Profile membership also predicted differences in externalizing, internalizing, and other problem behaviors assessed one year later. Findings indicate that youth may have distinct constellations of EF skills, underscoring the need for person-centered approaches that focus on patterns of individual characteristics.

Neural heterogeneity underlying late adolescent motivational processing is linked to individual differences in behavioral sensation seeking

Adolescent risk-taking, including sensation seeking (SS), is often attributed to developmental changes in connectivity among brain regions implicated in cognitive control and reward processing. Despite considerable scientific and popular interest in this neurodevelopmental framework, there are few empirical investigations of adolescent functional connectivity, let alone examinations of its links to SS behavior. The studies that have been done focus on mean-based approaches and leave unanswered questions about individual differences in neurodevelopment and behavior. The goal of this paper is to take a person-specific approach to the study of adolescent functional connectivity during a continuous motivational state, and to examine links between connectivity and self-reported SS behavior in 104 adolescents (M_Age  = 19.3; SD_Age  = 1.3). Using Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (GIMME), person-specific connectivity during two neuroimaging runs of a monetary incentive delay task was estimated among 12 a priori brain regions of interest representing reward, cognitive, and salience networks. Two data-driven subgroups were detected, a finding that was consistent between both neuroimaging runs, but associations with SS were only found in the first run, potentially reflecting neural habituation in the second run. Specifically, the subgroup that had unique connections between reward-related regions had greater SS and showed a distinctive relation between connectivity strength in the reward regions and SS. These findings provide novel evidence for heterogeneity in adolescent brain-behavior relations by showing that subsets of adolescents have unique associations between neural motivational processing and SS. Findings have broader implications for future work on reward processing, as they demonstrate that brain-behavior relations may attenuate across runs.

The Promise and Challenges of Intensive Longitudinal Designs for Imbalance Models of Adolescent Substance Use

Imbalance models of adolescent brain development attribute the increasing engagement in substance use during adolescence to within-person changes in the functional balance between the neural systems underlying socio-emotional, incentive processing, and cognitive control. However, the experimental designs and analytic techniques used to date do not lend themselves to explicit tests of how within-person change and within-person variability in socio-emotional processing and cognitive control place individual adolescents at risk for substance use. For a more complete articulation and a more stringent test of these models, we highlight the promise and challenges of using intensive longitudinal designs and analysis techniques that encompass many (often >10) within-person measurement occasions. Use of intensive longitudinal designs will lend researchers the tools required to make within-person inferences in individual adolescents that will ultimately align imbalance models of adolescent substance use with the methodological frameworks used to test them.

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.

Sex Differences in the Developmental Neuroscience of Adolescent Substance Use Risk

Adolescence is a period associated with the initiation and escalation of substance use and is also a time during which substantial changes take place in neural development, personality and behavior. Although rates of substance use between adolescent girls and boys do not differ substantially, there is evidence for sex differences in underlying vulnerability pathways associated with the development of substance use disorder. Here we review sex differences in adolescent brain development and how these differences may contribute to different risk pathways between females and males that emerge during this developmental period. We also discuss methodological considerations in the study of sex differences in brain and behavior and their implications for interpretation. We close by highlighting promising areas for future work.