Friendship stability in adolescence is associated with ventral striatum responses to vicarious rewards

AbstractAn important task for adolescents is to form and maintain friendships. In this three-wave biannual study, we used a longitudinal neuroscience perspective to examine the dynamics of friendship stability. Relative to childhood and adulthood, adolescence is marked by elevated ventral striatum activity when gaining self-serving rewards. Using a sample of participants between the ages of eight and twenty-eight, we tested age-related changes in ventral striatum response to gaining for stable (n = 48) versus unstable best friends (n = 75) (and self). In participants with stable friendships, we observed a quadratic developmental trajectory of ventral striatum responses to winning versus losing rewards for friends, whereas participants with unstable best friends showed no age-related changes. Ventral striatum activity in response to winning versus losing for friends further varied with friendship closeness for participants with unstable friendships. We suggest that these findings may reflect changing social motivations related to formation and maintenance of friendships across adolescence.

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Age-Related Changes in Distractibility: Developmental Trajectory of Sustained Attention in ADHD

Journal of Attention Disorders ◽

10.1177/1087054715575066 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 22 (14) ◽

pp. 1333-1343 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Ortal Slobodin ◽

Hanoch Cassuto ◽

Itai Berger

Keyword(s):

Sustained Attention ◽

Performance Test ◽

Continuous Performance Test ◽

Developmental Trajectory ◽

Continuous Performance ◽

Children With Adhd ◽

The Core ◽

Age Related ◽

Omission Errors ◽

Age Related Changes

Objective: This study investigated age-related changes in sustained attention in children with ADHD and in their typically developed peers. Method: The study used a Continuous Performance Test (CPT) that includes visual and auditory stimuli serving as distractors. The rate of omission errors was used as a measurement of difficulty in sustained attention. Participants were children and adolescents aged 7 to 18 years (478 with ADHD and 361 without ADHD). Results: Both groups of adolescents (with and without ADHD) showed reduced distractibility than younger children from the same group. However, distractibility tended to diminish in non-ADHD adolescents, but not in adolescents with ADHD. Conclusion: Although part of the difficulties in ADHD could be explained by developmental delay that improves with time, other deficits, such as increased distractibility causing more omission errors, do not show a clear developmental trajectory. The results suggest that deficits in inhibitory control might be the core of ADHD.

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Adaptive Adolescent Flexibility: Neurodevelopment of Decision-making and Learning in a Risky Context

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01061 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 413-423 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Ethan M. McCormick ◽

Eva H. Telzer

Keyword(s):

Adaptive Learning ◽

Sensation Seeking ◽

Ventral Striatum ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Adaptive Function ◽

Dual Nature ◽

Age Related ◽

Fmri Session ◽

Medial Pfc ◽

Age Related Changes

Research on adolescence has largely focused on the particular biological and neural changes that place teens at risk for negative outcomes linked to increases in sensation-seeking and risky behavior. However, there is a growing interest in the adaptive function of adolescence, with work highlighting the dual nature of adolescence as a period of potential risk and opportunity. We examined how behavioral and neural sensitivity to risk and reward varies as a function of age using the Balloon Analog Risk Task. Seventy-seven children and adolescents (ages 8–17 years) completed the Balloon Analog Risk Task during an fMRI session. Results indicate that adolescents show greater learning throughout the task. Furthermore, older participants showed increased neural responses to reward in the OFC and ventral striatum, increased activation to risk in the mid-cingulate cortex, as well as increased functional OFC–medial PFC coupling in both risk and reward contexts. Age-related changes in regional activity and interregional connectivity explain the link between age and increases in flexible learning. These results support the idea that adolescents' sensitivity to risk and reward supports adaptive learning and behavioral approaches for reward acquisition.

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Altered Developmental Trajectories in Intrinsic Function between Default, Salience, and Executive Networks in High-Functioning Autism

10.1101/252320 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Liu Yang ◽

Xiao Chen ◽

Xue Li ◽

Yang-Qian Shen ◽

Hui Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Developmental Trajectories ◽

Cingulate Cortex ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Developmental Trajectory ◽

Anterior Cingulate ◽

Ventral Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Age Related ◽

Brain Functional Connectivity ◽

Age Related Changes

AbstractAlthough many studies have focused on abnormal patterns of brain functional connectivity in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one important factor, the developmental effect of brain networks was largely overlooked. To clarify the abnormal developmental trajectory of brain functional connectivity in ASD, we focused on the age-related changes in three “core” neurocognitive networks: default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN) and central executive network (CEN, also divided into left and right CEN, i.e., lCEN and rCEN). The development of intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) within and between these networks were analyzed in 107 Chinese participants, including children, adolescents, and adults (54 patients with ASD and 53 typically developed (TD) participants; ages 6-30 years). We found that diagnosis-related distinctions in age-related changes suggest three maturation patterns in networks’ or nodes’ iFC: delayed (iFC between SN and rCEN), ectopic (iFC between SN and DMN, and iFC between posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and right anterior insula/dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)), and failure maturation (iFC between dACC and ventral medial prefrontal cortex). Compared with age-matched TD participants, ASD patients in children and adolescents exhibited hypo-connectivity, while that in adults showed hyper-connectivity. In addition, an independent verification based on Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) datasets confirmed our findings of developmental trajectories in ASD group, which also showed unchanged functional connectivity with age between DMN and SN and increasing iFC between rCEN and SN. The conspicuous differences in the development of three “core” networks in ASD were demonstrated, which may lead a nuanced understanding towards the abnormal brain network maturation trajectory of autism.

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