Fernández-Teruel Alberto
Department of Psychiatry & Forensic Medicine, Medical Psychology Unit, School of Medicine & Institute of Neurosciences, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, 08193 Barcelona, Spain.
Brain Sci. 2021 Feb 20;11(2):268. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11020268.
Adolescence is characterized both by the exacerbation of the experience of anxiety, fear or threat, on one hand, and by increased reward seeking (reward sensitivity) and risk taking on the other hand. The rise of these apparently opposite processes, i.e., threat-related anxiety and reward-related sensation seeking, seems to stem from a relatively decreased top-down inhibition of amygdala and striatal circuits by regulatory systems (e.g., prefrontal cortex, hippocampus) that mature later. The present commentary article aims to discuss recent related literature and focusses on two main issues: (i) the septo-hippocampal system (in particular the ventral hippocampus) might be a crucial region for the regulation of approach-avoidance conflict and also for the selection of the most appropriate responses during adolescence, and (ii) developmental studies involving early-life pleasurable-enriched experience (as opposed to early-life adversity) might be a useful study paradigm in order to decipher whether neuroplasticity induced by such experiences (for example, in the hippocampus and associated circuitry) may lead to better top-down inhibition and more "balanced" adolescent responses to environmental demands.
青春期的特点一方面是焦虑、恐惧或威胁体验的加剧，另一方面是奖赏寻求（奖赏敏感性）增加和冒险行为增多。这两个明显相反的过程，即与威胁相关的焦虑和与奖赏相关的感觉寻求的增加，似乎源于调节系统（如前额叶皮质、海马体）对杏仁核和纹状体回路自上而下的抑制相对减少，而这些调节系统成熟较晚。本评论文章旨在讨论近期相关文献，并聚焦于两个主要问题：（i）隔海马系统（特别是腹侧海马体）可能是调节趋避冲突以及在青春期选择最适当反应的关键区域，以及（ii）涉及早期丰富愉悦体验（与早期逆境相对）的发育研究可能是一种有用的研究范式，以便解读此类体验（例如在海马体及相关神经回路中）诱导的神经可塑性是否可能导致更好的自上而下抑制以及青少年对环境需求更“平衡”的反应。
