Adolescents, adults and rewards: comparing motivational neurocircuitry recruitment using fMRI.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Adolescent risk-taking, including behaviors resulting in injury or death, has been attributed in part to maturational differences in mesolimbic incentive-motivational neurocircuitry, including ostensible oversensitivity of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) to rewards.

Methodology/principal findings

To test whether adolescents showed increased NAcc activation by cues for rewards, or by delivery of rewards, we scanned 24 adolescents (age 12-17) and 24 adults age (22-42) with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a monetary incentive delay (MID) task. The MID task was configured to temporally disentangle potential reward or potential loss anticipation-related brain signal from reward or loss notification-related signal. Subjects saw cues signaling opp

SUBMITTER: Bjork JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2897849 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature