The Adolescent Brain

Abstract

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by suboptimal decisions and actions that are associated with an increased incidence of unintentional injuries, violence, substance abuse, unintended pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. Traditional neurobiological and cognitive explanations for adolescent behavior have failed to account for the nonlinear changes in behavior observed during adolescence, relative to both childhood and adulthood. This review provides a biologically plausible model of the neural mechanisms underlying these nonlinear changes in behavior. We provide evidence from recent human brain imaging and animal studies that there is a heightened responsiveness to incentives and socioemotional contexts during this time, when impulse control is still relatively immature. These findings suggest differential development of bottom-up limbic systems, implicated in incentive and emotional processing, to top-down control systems during adolescence as compared to childhood and adulthood. This developmental pattern may be exacerbated in those adolescents prone to emotional reactivity, increasing the likelihood of poor outcomes.

Differential patterns of age‐related cortical and subcortical functional connectivity in 6‐to‐10 year old children: A connectome‐wide association study

“…As the cortex matures and its connections to the subcortex strengthen (Cummings, 1993), this previous subcortical reliance on highly integrative connectivity may be relaxed. Such an imbalance in timing of development has been previously proposed for cortical/limbic connectivity (Casey, Jones, & Hare, 2008; Heller, Cohen, Dreyfuss, & Casey, 2016). Given the importance of various subcortical structures and their cortical connections with different psychiatric disorders (e.g., Cortico‐cerebellar‐thalamic‐cortical loop in Schizophrenia, caudate motor in ADHD, thalamus/basal ganglia/primary sensory networks; Cerliani et al., 2015), having a better understanding of differences within and between cortical and subcortical regions is a crucial foundation for future efforts studying connectivity differences related to psychopathology.…”

Big Five traits, affect balance and health behaviors: A self-regulation resource perspective

“…Given the student sample, it is important to replicate the findings with other adult populations, as emerging adults (adults aged 18-25) which comprised the majority of this sample, are unique developmentally with respect to brain areas related to self-control, making them more susceptible to engage in emotion driven rather than rational behavior (Casey, Jones, & Hare, 2008). Nonetheless, the prospective design and relatively large sample are noteworthy methodological strengths that provide clear advances over previous research testing the SRRM.…”

A dual systems model of adolescent risk‐taking

“…In the past several years, a new perspective on risk-taking and decision-making during adolescence has emerged, one that is informed by advances in developmental neuroscience (Casey, Getz, & Galvan, 2008;Steinberg, 2008). According to this view, risky behavior in adolescence is the product of the interaction between changes in two distinct neurobiological systems: a ''socioemotional'' system, which is localized in limbic and paralimbic areas of the brain, including the amygdala, ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and superior temporal sulcus; and a ''cognitive control'' system, which is mainly composed of the lateral prefrontal and parietal cortices and those parts of the anterior cingulate cortex to which they are interconnected (Steinberg, 2008).…”