3-152 - Neural and Behavioral Underpinnings of Adaptive Behavior in Adolescence

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Extensive evidence highlights the adverse effects of heightened social, affective, and reward sensitivities paired with immature cognitive control in adolescence, including increased risk-taking, sensitivity to peer-pressure, and increased sensation seeking behavior. However, recent work has suggested that certain developmentally specific sensitivities may also confer advantages during adolescence. It has been suggested that the increase in social and affective sensitivity that emerges during adolescence facilitates the ability to flexibly update behavior and adapt to one’s environment. This symposium will focus on the behavioral and neural underpinnings of adaptive behavior in adolescence. The first talk demonstrates how adolescent strategies in exploring a novel environment are distinct, but equally effective to those of adults. The next speaker will show how adolescent sensitivity to risk and reward supports adaptive behavior in goal-directed decision making tasks and how age-related increases in connectivity between the orbitofrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex supports this behavior. The third speaker demonstrates differential behavioral and neural effects of social context on decision-making in teens raised in foster care compared to a community sample and provides evidence for adaptive involvement of the nucleus accumbens in decision-making. The final speaker will present work on adolescent-specific recruitment of the salience network in response to changes in emotional expression of others and how this heightened neural sensitivity in adolescence is predictive of social behavior. Together, presentations in this symposium will highlight that adolescent sensitivity to reward, risk, and social information can serve to guide adaptive behavior.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Maya L. Rosen, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Adolescents and adults use different, but equally effective, strategies to explore their environment - Presenting Author: Leah H. Somerville, Harvard University

• Adaptive Adolescent Flexibility: Neurodevelopment of Decision-making and Learning in a Risky Context - Presenting Author: Ethan McCormick, University of North Carolina, Chapel HIll; Eva Telzer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

• Peer influences on adolescent risk taking: Comparing a community and foster care sample. - Presenting Author: Zdena Anastasia Op de Macks, University of Oregon; Shannon J Peake, University of Oregon; John Flournoy, University of Oregon; Jessica E Flannery, University of Oregon; Arian Mobasser, University of Oregon; Maureen M. Durnin, University of Oregon; Sarah L Alberti, University of Oregon; Philip A. Fisher, University of Oregon; Jennifer Pfeifer, University of Oregon

• Early adolescent specific recruitment of the salience network for changes in emotional expression predicts social behavior - Presenting Author: Maya L. Rosen, University of Washington; Margaret A. Sheridan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kelly A. Sambrook, University of Washington; Meg J. Dennison, University of Washington; Jessica L. Jenness, University of Washington; Mary K. Askren, University of Washington; Andrew N. Meltzoff, University of Washington; Katie McLaughlin, University of Washington