Adolescence and Reward: Making Sense of Neural and Behavioral Changes Amid the Chaos
Walker, D.M.; Bell, M.R.; Flores, C.; Gulley, J.M.; Willing, J.; Paul, M.J.
Journal of Neuroscience the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience 37(45): 10855-10866
2017
ISSN/ISBN: 1529-2401 PMID: 29118215 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1834-17.2017Document Number: 579240
Adolescence is a time of significant neural and behavioral change with remarkable development in social, emotional, and cognitive skills. It is also a time of increased exploration and risk-taking (e.g., drug use). Many of these changes are thought to be the result of increased reward-value coupled with an underdeveloped inhibitory control, and thus a hypersensitivity to reward. Perturbations during adolescence can alter the developmental trajectory of the brain, resulting in long-term alterations in reward-associated behaviors. This review highlights recent developments in our understanding of how neural circuits, pubertal hormones, and environmental factors contribute to adolescent-typical reward-associated behaviors with a particular focus on sex differences, the medial prefrontal cortex, social reward, social isolation, and drug use. We then introduce a new approach that makes use of natural adaptations of seasonally breeding species to investigate the role of pubertal hormones in adolescent development. This research has only begun to parse out contributions of the many neural, endocrine, and environmental changes to the heightened reward sensitivity and increased vulnerability to mental health disorders that characterize this life stage.