Citation

Bjork JM, Smith AR, Chen G, Hommer DW. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 2011; 1(4): 570-577.

Affiliation

Division of Clinical Neuroscience and Behavioral Research, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.dcn.2011.07.005

PMID

21927631

PMCID

PMC3171827

Abstract

Maturational differences in brain responsiveness to rewards have been implicated in the increased rates of injury and death in adolescents from behavior-related causes. However, much of this morbidity is related to drug intoxication or other externalizing behaviors, and may be concentrated in a subset of adolescents who are at psychosocial or neurobiological risk. To examine whether individual differences in psychosocial and behavioral symptomatology relate to activation of motivational neurocircuitry, we scanned 26 psychiatrically-healthy adolescents using fMRI as they performed a monetary incentive delay task. Overall Problem Density on the Drug Use Screening Inventory (DUSI-OPD) correlated positively with activation of ventral mesofrontal cortex (mFC) during anticipation of responding for rewards (versus responding for no incentive). In addition, DUSI-OPD also correlated positively with right ventral striatum recruitment during anticipation of responding to win rewards (versus responding for no incentive or to avoid losses of identical magnitudes). Finally, a psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis indicated that increased connectivity between nucleus accumbens and portions of anterior cingulate and mFC as a function of reward prospects also correlated with DUSI-OPD. These findings extend previous reports demonstrating that in adolescents, individual differences in reactivity of motivational neurocircuitry relate to different facets of impulsivity or externalizing behaviors.

Language: en