Op de Macks Zdena A, Bunge Silvia A, Bell Orly N, Kriegsfeld Lance J, Kayser Andrew S, Dahl Ronald E
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 2310 Tolman Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA.
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, 175 Li Ka Shing Center, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2017 Feb 1;12(2):240-250. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsw125.
The onset of adolescence is associated with an increased tendency to engage in risky behaviors and a developmental shift toward peers that contributes to increased prioritization for learning about and achieving social status. There is relatively little understanding about the specific links between these adolescent-typical phenomena, particularly regarding their neural underpinnings. Based on existing models that suggest the role of puberty in promoting adolescent status-seeking and risk-taking tendencies, we investigated the relation of pubertal hormones with behavioral and neural responses to status-relevant social information in the context of risk taking. We used a probabilistic decision task in which 11- to 13-year-old girls chose to take a risk, or not, while receiving either social rank or monetary performance feedback. While feedback type did not differentially influence risk-taking behavior, whole-brain imaging results showed that activation in the anterior insula was increased for risk taking in the social rank feedback condition compared to the monetary feedback condition. This heightened activation was more pronounced in girls with higher estradiol levels. These findings suggest that brain processes involved in adolescent risky decisions may be influenced by the desire for social-status enhancement and provide preliminary evidence for the role of pubertal hormones in enhancing this adolescent-typical social sensitivity.
青春期的开始与从事危险行为的倾向增加以及向同伴的发展转变有关，这种转变导致对了解和获得社会地位的优先级增加。对于这些典型的青少年现象之间的具体联系，尤其是关于它们的神经基础，人们了解相对较少。基于现有的模型表明青春期在促进青少年追求地位和冒险倾向方面的作用，我们研究了青春期激素与在冒险情境中对与地位相关的社会信息的行为和神经反应之间的关系。我们使用了一个概率决策任务，在这个任务中，11至13岁的女孩在接受社会等级或金钱表现反馈的同时，选择是否冒险。虽然反馈类型对冒险行为没有差异影响，但全脑成像结果显示，与金钱反馈条件相比，在社会等级反馈条件下冒险时，前岛叶的激活增加。这种增强的激活在雌二醇水平较高的女孩中更为明显。这些发现表明，参与青少年冒险决策的大脑过程可能受到对提高社会地位的渴望的影响，并为青春期激素在增强这种典型的青少年社会敏感性方面的作用提供了初步证据。
