Adolescents, Adults and Rewards: Comparing Motivational Neurocircuitry Recruitment Using fMRI

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 5; no. 7; p. e11440
• Main Authors: Bjork, James M., Smith, Ashley R., Chen, Gang, Hommer, Daniel W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 06.07.2010; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Adult; Adults; Alcoholism; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Brain; Brain mapping; Child; Cues; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Magnetic resonance; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Medical imaging; Mesolimbic system; Motivation - physiology; Neostriatum; Neural circuitry; Neural Pathways - physiology; Neuroimaging; Neurology; Neuroscience/Behavioral Neuroscience; Neuroscience/Cognitive Neuroscience; Neuroscience/Neurodevelopment; Nucleus accumbens; Nucleus Accumbens - metabolism; Nucleus Accumbens - physiology; Pediatrics and Child Health/Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Pediatrics and Child Health/Child Development; Predictive control; Public Health and Epidemiology/Social and Behavioral Determinants of Health; Reinforcement; Reward; Risk taking; Signaling; Studies; Teenagers; Young Adult; Youth; United States > US; Maryland

Adolescent risk-taking, including behaviors resulting in injury or death, has been attributed in part to maturational differences in mesolimbic incentive-motivational neurocircuitry, including ostensible oversensitivity of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) to rewards. To test whether adolescents showed i...