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Decision-making in the adolescent brain
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore1 & Trevor W Robbins2
Adolescence is characterized by making risky decisions. Early lesion and neuroimaging studies in adults pointed to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and related structures as having a key role in decision-making. More recent studies have fractionated decision-making processes into its various components, including the representation of value, response selection (including inter-temporal choice and cognitive control), associative learning, and affective and social aspects. These different aspects of decision-making have been the focus of investigation in recent studies of the adolescent brain. Evidence points to a dissociation between the relatively slow, linear development of impulse control and response inhibition during adolescence versus the nonlinear development of the reward system, which is often hyper-responsive to rewards in adolescence. This suggests that decision-making in adolescence may be particularly modulated by emotion and social factors, for example, when adolescents are with peers or in other affective (hot) contexts.
npg 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
Almost 400 years ago, Shakespeare portrayed adolescents as follows: I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. This quote, from The Winters Tale, depicts adolescents as making risky decisions, a characteristic that is associated with this age group today. Adolescence is defined as the period of life that starts with the biological changes of puberty and ends at the time at which the individual attains a stable, independent role in society1. During this period, decisions become increasingly independent of adults, and instead peers become more influential. Risky decisions made during adolescence can have serious consequences: the leading cause of death in adolescence is accidents, which are often the result of risky decisions, for example, dangerous driving and experimentation with alcohol and drugs2. It is thus important to understand the neuro-cognitive processes that underlie decision-making in adolescence. Decision-making cognition depends on the interaction of several component processes, including the representation of value, response selection (including inhibitory control), learning and socio-emotional factors. We consider the development in adolescence of each of these processes, in the context of what has been established from studies...