Meaningful family relationships: neurocognitive buffers of adolescent risk taking

Abstract

Discordant development of brain regions responsible for cognitive control and reward processing may render adolescents susceptible to risk taking. Identifying ways to reduce this neural imbalance during adolescence can have important implications for risk taking and associated health outcomes. Accordingly, we sought to examine how a key family relationship-family obligation-can reduce this vulnerability. Forty-eight adolescents underwent an fMRI scan during which they completed a risk-taking and cognitive control task. Results suggest that adolescents with greater family obligation values show decreased activation in the ventral striatum when receiving monetary rewards and increased dorsolateral PFC activation during behavioral inhibition. Reduced ventral striatum activation correlated with less real-life risk-taking behavior and enhanced dorsolateral PFC activation correlated with better decision-making skills. Thus, family obligation may decrease reward sensitivity and enhance cognitive control, thereby reducing risk-taking behaviors.

Figure 1

The BART has three types of conditions: (A) explosions, in which the participant inflated the red balloon resulting in an explosion; (B) cash outs, in which the participant inflated the red balloon and successfully cashed out; and (C) control, in which the participant inflated white balloons, which are not associated with a monetary reward.

Figure 2

Main effects on the (A) BART to pumps > control and (B) GNG to no-go > go.

Figure 3

Neural regions that correlated negatively with family obligation values during cash outs. Percent BOLD signal change was extracted from the right and left VS during cash outs and plotted with family obligation values.

Figure 4

Percent BOLD signal change in the DLPFC during behavioral inhibitions that correlated with family obligation values.

Figure 5

Percent BOLD signal change in (A) the VS that correlated with self-reported risk taking and (B) the DLPFC that correlated with self-reported decision-making skills.