Citation

Harden KP, Mann FD. Child Dev. Perspect. 2015; 9(4): 211-216.

Affiliation

The University of Texas at Austin.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/cdep.12135

PMID

26664416

Abstract

Adolescence is a time of increasing engagement in a variety of problem behaviors, including substance use and delinquency. Genetic risk for problem behavior increases over adolescence, is mediated partially by individual differences in sensation seeking, and is exacerbated by involvement with deviant peers. In this article, we describe how findings from behavioral genetic research on problem behavior intersect with research from developmental neuroscience. In particular, the incentive-processing system, including the ventral striatum, responds increasingly to rewards in adolescence, particularly in peer contexts. This developmental shift may be influenced by hormonal changes at puberty. Individual differences in the structure and function of reward-responsive brain regions may be intermediary phenotypes that mediate adolescents' genetic risk for problem behavior. The study of problem behavior can be enriched by interdisciplinary research that integrates measures of brain structure and function into genetically informed studies.
Keywords: Juvenile justice

Language: en