Mothers know best: redirecting adolescent reward sensitivity toward safe behavior during risk taking
Open accessAbstract
Despite being one of the healthiest developmental periods, morbidity and mortality rates increase dramatically during adolescence, largely due to preventable, risky behaviors. Heightened reward sensitivity, coupled with ineffective cognitive control, has been proposed to underlie adolescents' risk taking. In this study, we test whether reward sensitivity can be redirected to promote safe behavior. Adolescents completed a risk-taking task in the presence of their mother and alone during fMRI. Adolescents demonstrated reduced risk-taking behavior when their mothers were present compared with alone, which was associated with greater recruitment of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) when making safe decisions, decreased activation in the ventral striatum following risky decisions and greater functional coupling between the ventral striatum and VLPFC when making safe decisions. Importantly, the very same neural circuitry (i.e. ventral striatum) that has been linked to greater risk-taking can also be redirected toward thoughtful, more deliberative and safe decisions.
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In adolescents, the presence of a caregiver during a risky decision task decreased risky choices and increased activation in control regions including vlPFC and mPFC, and decreased ventral striatum and amygdala activation.
“Similarly, in the reward domain, the presence of a caregiver during a risky decision task decreased risky choices and increased activation in control regions including vlPFC and mPFC, and decreased ventral striatum and amygdala activation in adolescents [50].”
From The neuroscience of emotion regulation development: Implications for education (2016) · cites this paper as [50]
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- Authors
- Telzer, E. H., Ichien, N. T., & Qu, Y.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Department of Psychology and
- Venue
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2015-03-09
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1383-1391
- ISSN
- 1749-5016 (ISSN-L)
- 1749-5024
- PMC
- PMC4590537
- OpenAlex
- W2004445171
- Cited by
- 117
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 4
- FWCI
- 8.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1459719)
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA039923)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- adolescent risk-taking, reward sensitivity, maternal presence, ventral striatum, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, cognitive control, risk-taking, parental influence
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Mothers, Reward, Risk-Taking, Prefrontal Cortex, Ventral Striatum
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