Ethan M. McCormick

Adolescent neurodevelopment of cognitive control and risk-taking in negative family contexts ☆

Adolescents have an increased need to regulate their behavior as they gain access to opportunities for risky behavior; however, cognitive control systems necessary for this regulation remain relatively immature. Parents can impact their adolescent childs abilities to regulate their behavior and engagement in risk taking. Since adolescents undergo significant neural change, negative parent-child relationship quality may impede or alter development in prefrontal regions subserving cognitive control. To test this hypothesis, 20 adolescents completed a Go/NoGo task during two fMRI scans occurring 1year apart. Adolescents reporting greater family conflict and lower family cohesion showed longitudinal increases in risk-taking behavior, which was mediated by longitudinal increases in left VLPFC activation during cognitive control. These results underscore the importance of parent-child relationships during early adolescence, and the neural processes by which cognitive control may be derailed and may lead to increased risk taking.

Failure to retreat: Blunted sensitivity to negative feedback supports risky behavior in adolescents

ABSTRACT Decision‐making processes rarely occur in isolation. Rather, representations are updated constantly based on feedback to past decisions and actions. However, previous research has focused on the reaction to feedback receipt itself, instead of examining how feedback information is integrated into future decisions. In the current study, we examined differential neural sensitivity during risk decisions following positive versus negative feedback in a risk‐taking context, and how this differential sensitivity is linked to adolescent risk behavior. Fifty‐eight adolescents (ages 13–17 years) completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) during an fMRI session and reported on their levels of risk‐taking behavior. Results show that reduced medial PFC (mPFC) response following negative versus positive feedback is associated with fewer reductions in task‐based risky decisions following negative feedback, as well as increased self‐reported risk‐taking behavior. These results suggest that reduced neural integration of negative feedback into during future decisions supports risky behavior, perhaps by discounting negative relative to positive feedback information when making subsequent risky decisions.

Activation in Context: Differential Conclusions Drawn from Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses of Adolescents’ Cognitive Control-Related Neural Activity

Although immature cognitive control, subserved by late-developing prefrontal regions, has been proposed to underlie increased risk taking during adolescence, it remains unclear what patterns of PFC activation represent mature brain states: more or less activation? One challenge to drawing cogent conclusions from extant work stems from its reliance on single-time point neuroimaging and cross-sectional comparisons, which are ill-suited for assessing the complex changes that characterize adolescence. This necessitates longitudinal fMRI work to track within-subject changes in PFC function and links to risk-taking behavior, which can serve as an external marker for maturation of neural systems involved in cognitive control. In the current study, 20 healthy adolescents (13 males) completed a go/nogo task during two fMRI scans, once at age 14 years and again at age 15 years. We found that the association between cognitive control-related VLPFC activation and risk-taking behavior reversed when examining wave 1 (W1) versus longitudinal change (W2 > W1) and wave 2 (W2) in neural activation, such that increased VLPFC activation at W1 was associated with lower risk taking, whereas longitudinal increases in cognitive control-related VLPFC activation as well as heightened VLPFC activation at W2 were associated with greater risk taking. Several steps were taken to disentangle potential alternative accounts that might explain these disparate results across time. Findings highlight the necessity of considering brain-behavior relationships in the context of ongoing developmental changes and suggests that using neuroimaging data at a single time point to predict behavioral changes can introduce interpretation errors when failing to account for changes in neural trajectories.

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

Adolescence is a period of sensitivity to social stimuli. In particular, research has focused on the increased sensitivity to risks and social information seen during adolescence. However, recent evidence also suggests that adolescents can flexibly use information in service of their goals, raising an interesting question: are adolescents able to selectively discount social information if it conflicts with their goals? To test this question, fifty-five children and adolescents (ages 8–17 years) completed a social variant of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task during an fMRI session. Adolescents showed decreased tracking of negative social feedback in regions involved in salience-monitoring (e.g. insula) and social processing (e.g., TPJ, pSTS). Age-related changes in neural processing of risk and social feedback contributed to better performance for older participants. These results suggest that adolescents are able to suppress goal-irrelevant social feedback, rather than being uniformly hyper-sensitive to social information.

Neural correlates of sibling closeness and association with externalizing behavior in adolescence

Abstract Sibling relationships have been linked to adolescent externalizing behaviors, but the neurobiological factors that underlie this association have not been identified. This study investigated sibling closeness and birth order as a predictor of adolescent externalizing behavior via differences in neural processes during safe decision‐making. A total of 77 adolescents (range = 12‐15 years, Mage = 13.45 years, 40 females) completed a computerized driving task during a functional MRI scan. Results showed that adolescents’ perceptions of sibling closeness were associated with greater neural activation in the anterior insula, ventral striatum and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex when making safe decisions, suggesting that the quality of sibling relationships modulates adolescent neurocognition even without being present. Furthermore, moderated mediation analyses revealed that higher sibling closeness was associated with lower externalizing behavior via left anterior insula activation during safe decision‐making, but only for adolescents without older siblings (i.e. eldest children) compared to adolescents who had multiple older siblings. Importantly, these findings persisted above and beyond parental and peer closeness and sibling characteristics (i.e. sex, relatedness, birth order), highlighting the significant influence of sibling relationships on adolescent externalizing behavior through the brain.

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

Abstract 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.

Differential effects of parent and peer presence on neural correlates of risk taking in adolescence

Abstract Adolescence is a developmental period associated with increased health‐risk behaviors and unique sensitivity to the input from the social context, paralleled by major changes in the developing brain. Peer presence increases adolescent risk taking, associated with greater reward‐related activity, while parental presence decreases risk taking, associated with decreased reward‐related activity and increased cognitive control. Yet the effects specific to peers and parents are still unknown. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study compared within‐person peer and parent influences on risky decision‐making during adolescence (ages 12‐15 years; N = 56). Participants completed the Yellow Light Game (YLG), a computerized driving task, during which they could make safe or risky decisions, in the presence of a peer and their parent. Behavioral findings revealed no effects of social context on risk taking. At the neural level, a collection of affective, social and cognitive regions [ventral striatum (VS), temporo‐parietal junction (TPJ), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)] was more active during decision‐making with peers than parents. Additionally, functional connectivity analyses showed greater coupling between affective, social and cognitive control regions (VS‐insula, VS‐TPJ) during decision‐making with parents than peers. These findings highlight the complex nature of social influence processes in peer and parent contexts, and contribute to our understanding of the opportunities and vulnerabilities associated with adolescent social sensitivity.

Not Doomed to Repeat: Enhanced Medial Prefrontal Cortex Tracking of Errors Promotes Adaptive Behavior during Adolescence

Feedback information is one of the most powerful forces that promotes learning, providing guidance for changes to ongoing behavioral patterns. Previous examinations of feedback learning have largely relied on explicit feedback based on task performance. However, learning is not restricted to explicit feedback and likely involves other forms of more subtle feedback cues. One potential form of this kind of learning may involve internally generated feedback in response to error commission. Whether this error-related response prompts neural and behavioral adaptation that overlaps with, or is distinct from, those evoked by external feedback is largely unknown. To explore this gap, 55 adolescents completed a difficult behavioral inhibition task designed to elicit relatively high rates of error commission during an fMRI session. We examined neural adaptation after accumulating errors (i.e., internally generated negative feedback events) at the group level, as well as the impact of individual differences in error tracking on overall task performance. Group effects show that medial PFC (mPFC) activation tracks accumulating errors; however, reduced tracking of errors is associated with greater total false alarms. These findings suggest that increased mPFC integration of error-related feedback is beneficial for task performance and, in concert with previous findings, suggests a domain-general role for mPFC integration of negative feedback.

Methodological considerations for developmental longitudinal fMRI research

There has been a large spike in longitudinal fMRI studies in recent years, and so it is essential that researchers carefully assess the limitations and challenges afforded by longitudinal designs. In this article, we provide an overview of important considerations for longitudinal fMRI research in developmental samples, including task design, sampling strategies, and group-level analyses. We first discuss considerations for task designs, weighing the pros and cons of many commonly used tasks, as well as outlining how the tasks may be impacted by repeated exposure. Secondly, we review the types of group-level analyses that can be conducted on longitudinal fMRI data, analyses which must account for repeated measures. Finally, we review and critique recent longitudinal studies that have emerged in the past few years.