Elsevier

NeuroImage

Volume 100, 15 October 2014, Pages 281-289
NeuroImage

Gambling for self, friends, and antagonists: Differential contributions of affective and social brain regions on adolescent reward processing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.06.020Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Ventral striatum hyperactivity in adolescence is dependent on social context.

  • Medial PFC activation peaks in mid to late adolescence.

  • Neural sensitivity to the social context modulates risk-taking behavior.

Abstract

Adolescence is a time of increasing emotional arousal, sensation-seeking and risk-taking, especially in the context of peers. Recent neuroscientific studies have pinpointed to the role of the ventral striatum as a brain region which is particularly sensitive to reward, and to ‘social brain’ regions, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the precuneus, and the temporal parietal junction, as being particularly responsive to social contexts. However, no study to date has examined adolescents' sensitivity to reward across different social contexts. In this study we examined 249 participants between the ages 8 and 25, on a monetary reward-processing task. Participants could win or lose money for themselves, their best friend and a disliked peer. Winning for self resulted in a mid- to late adolescent specific peak in neural activation in the ventral striatum, whereas winning for a disliked peer resulted in a mid- to late adolescent specific peak in the mPFC. Our findings reveal that ventral striatum and mPFC hypersensitivity in adolescence is dependent on social context. Taken together, these results suggest that increased risk-taking and sensation seeking observed in adolescence might not be purely related to hyperactivity of the ventral striatum, but that these behaviors are probably strongly related to the social context in which they occur.

Section snippets

Participants

Final inclusion consisted of 249 participants between the ages of 8 and 25 who were members of the general public, recruited through schools and local advertisements. An additional 14 participants were excluded for not finishing the task or technical problems during data collection, and an additional 36 participants were excluded for excessive head motion (more than 3 mm in any direction) which is common in developmental neuroimaging studies (approximately 12%) (Galvan et al., 2012, Poldrack et

Behavioral ratings

To test whether the subjective pleasure values for winning and losing differed per condition a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with two within-subjects factors: Person (three levels: Self, Friend, Antagonist) and Outcome (two levels: Win, Lose). Age groups were added as a between-subjects factor.

The ANOVA showed significant main effects of Outcome (F(1205) = 365.67, p < .001, η2 = .62) and Person (F(2,410) = 25.47, p < .001, η2 = .10). Furthermore, the interaction effect of Person × Outcome was

Discussion

The current study aimed to investigate developmental patterns of neural responses to rewards in a social context in a large sample with a continuous age range between 8- and 25-years-old. Reward related neural responses have been associated with heightened risk-taking behavior during adolescence (Galvan, 2010), which is hypothesized to be related to the social context (for instance peer presence) (Steinberg, 2008). Here we investigated the social context related components of reward related

Conclusion

Taken together, this study shows that striatum activation peaks in mid-adolescence and that striatum activation is influenced by social context. In addition, we observed that medial prefrontal cortex shows a similar adolescent peak in sensitivity when playing for disliked others. This is the first study confirming the hypothesized peak in both striatum and social brain activation during adolescence in a large sample with a continuous age range spanning from childhood to early adulthood. These

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