Embracing the Complexities of Adolescence: The Role of Pubertal Maturation and Hormones on Neurodevelopment

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Fifty years ago, Wohlwill(1970) described age as a proxy variable which, while limited, was nonetheless the best measure of developmental processes. Within adolescence, it has proven exceedingly difficult to disentangle maturational metrics of age, pubertal status, and hormones. It remains unclear which “best” captures neurodevelopment and risk for psychopathology. The proposed symposium tackles the question of development by including three presentations with 2+ developmental measures (e.g., age, puberty, pubertal hormones, longitudinal changes) on relatively large samples of youth. All three include MRI of neurodevelopmental processes which are shown to change dramatically across adolescence. The first presentation reveals that age and testosterone are associated with amygdala volume, but whether more developed youth have larger or smaller subregion and total amygdalar volume depends on the measure of development (via age, testosterone and gender). Regarding amygdala function, the second presentation reports that reduced amygdala-vmPFC connectivity is associated with greater anxiety symptoms in girls with higher testosterone, suggestive of a profile in which advanced development may confer anxiety risk. The third presentation focuses on reward circuitry showing that more developed youth exhibit less sensitivity to reward in the ventral striatum as evidenced by longitudinal changes and pubertal maturation, suggesting an efficiency in reward processing. Leveraging these presentations and these authors’ recent work, the discussion will consider strengths and weaknesses of maturation measures. We explore whether it is possible to end the debate about which metric is best and, embracing the complexities of adolescence, propose an updated perspective that asks when each metric is best.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Chair

• Cecile D Ladouceur, University of Pittsburgh

Discussant

• Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff, Iowa State University

Individual Presentations

• Amygdala Subregion Volumes in Adolescents: The Role of Testosterone and Androgen Receptor Genotype - Presenting Author: Megan Herting, Children's Hospital Los Angeles; Non-Presenting Author: Claire Campbell, University of Southern California; Non-Presenting Author: Micheal Tyszka, California Institute of Technology; Non-Presenting Author: Bonnie Nagel, Oregon Health & Science University

• Fronto-amygdala Functional Connectivity is Negatively Associated with Anxiety Symptoms in Girls with High Testosterone Levels - Presenting Author: Cecile D Ladouceur, University of Pittsburgh; Non-Presenting Author: Teague Henry, University of Pittsburgh; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff, Iowa State University; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer S. Silk, University of Pittsburgh

• Pubertal Development, but not Hormone Levels, is Associated with Reduced Response to Reward - Presenting Author: Stuart White, Boys Town National Research Hospital; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff, Iowa State University; Non-Presenting Author: Yoojin Lee; Non-Presenting Author: Jenny Mai Phan, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Cecile D Ladouceur, University of Pittsburgh