A framework for integrating neural development and social networks in adolescence

Abstract

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by increasingly complex and influential peer contexts. Concurrently, developmental changes in neural circuits, particularly those related to social cognition, affective salience, and cognitive control, contribute to individuals' social interactions and behaviors. However, while adolescents' behaviors and overall outcomes are influenced by the entirety of their social environments, insights from developmental and social neuroscience often come from studies of individual relationships or specific social actors. By capturing information about both adolescents' individual relations and their larger social contexts, social network analysis offers a powerful opportunity to enhance our understanding of how social factors interact with adolescent development. In this review, we highlight the relevant features of adolescent social and neural development that should be considered when integrating social network analysis and neuroimaging methods. We focus on broad themes of adolescent development, including identity formation, peer sensitivity, and the pursuit of social goals, that serve as potential mechanisms for the relations between neural processes and social network features. With these factors in mind, we review the current research and propose future applications of these methods and theories.

Keywords: Adolescence; Neurodevelopment; Neuroimaging; Social Behavior; Social networks.

Fig. 1

A conceptual framework for the interrelations between relevant features of adolescent development when integrating neurodevelopment, social networks, and psychosocial processes. Neural systems most often related to social processes, including brain regions implicated in social cognition, affective salience, and cognitive control, interact with one another to contribute to interrelated psychosocial processes, such as identity formation, sensitivity to peers, and social goals. These, in turn, are related to how individuals approach and interpret feedback from their changing social networks. Thin gray arrows represent interactions and relations within levels of the model, whereas larger blue arrows represent relations across levels. For the neurodevelopment layer, bullet points represent some of the individual regions in the network, whereas bullet points in the other layers represent potential subconstructs that could be operationalized for measurement.