Abstract:Adolescence is a developmental period associated with increased health-risk behaviors and unique sensitivity to the input from the social context, paralleled by major changes in the developing brain. Peer presence increases adolescent risk taking, associated with greater reward-related activity, while parental presence decreases risk taking, associated with decreased reward-related activity and increased cognitive control. Yet the effects specific to peers and parents are still unknown. The current functional … Show more
“…Interestingly, the TPJ in particular showed a relatively high estimated influence of shared environment on both surface area and cortical thickness. The TPJ is consistently activated during social processing and social decision-making ( Burnett et al, 2008 ; van der Meulen et al, 2016 ; van Hoorn et al, 2016a ; van Hoorn et al, 2018 ). Given that social processing is dependent on environmental input, the TPJ might therefore be particularly sensitive to the social environment.…”
Prosocial behavior and empathy are important aspects of developing social relations in childhood. Prior studies showed protracted structural development of social brain regions associated with prosocial behavior. However, it remains unknown how structure of the social brain is influenced by genetic or environmental factors, and whether overlapping heritability factors explain covariance in structure of the social brain and behavior. The current study examined this hypothesis in a twin sample (aged 7–9-year; N = 512). Bilateral measures of surface area and cortical thickness of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and precuneus were analyzed. Results showed genetic contributions to surface area and cortical thickness for all brain regions. We found additional shared environmental influences for TPJ, suggesting that this region might be relatively more sensitive to social experiences. Genetic factors also influenced parent-reported prosocial behavior (A = 45%) and empathy (A = 59%). We provided initial evidence that the precuneus shares genetically determined variance with empathy, suggesting a possible small genetic overlap (9%) in brain structure and empathy. These findings show that structure of the social brain and empathy are driven by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with some factors overlapping for brain structure and behavior.
“…Interestingly, the TPJ in particular showed a relatively high estimated influence of shared environment on both surface area and cortical thickness. The TPJ is consistently activated during social processing and social decision-making ( Burnett et al, 2008 ; van der Meulen et al, 2016 ; van Hoorn et al, 2016a ; van Hoorn et al, 2018 ). Given that social processing is dependent on environmental input, the TPJ might therefore be particularly sensitive to the social environment.…”
Prosocial behavior and empathy are important aspects of developing social relations in childhood. Prior studies showed protracted structural development of social brain regions associated with prosocial behavior. However, it remains unknown how structure of the social brain is influenced by genetic or environmental factors, and whether overlapping heritability factors explain covariance in structure of the social brain and behavior. The current study examined this hypothesis in a twin sample (aged 7–9-year; N = 512). Bilateral measures of surface area and cortical thickness of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), and precuneus were analyzed. Results showed genetic contributions to surface area and cortical thickness for all brain regions. We found additional shared environmental influences for TPJ, suggesting that this region might be relatively more sensitive to social experiences. Genetic factors also influenced parent-reported prosocial behavior (A = 45%) and empathy (A = 59%). We provided initial evidence that the precuneus shares genetically determined variance with empathy, suggesting a possible small genetic overlap (9%) in brain structure and empathy. These findings show that structure of the social brain and empathy are driven by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, with some factors overlapping for brain structure and behavior.
“…In addition to our primary focus on context-dependent differences in conformity rates, we explored the relative influence of parents vs. peers, particularly when both endorsed attitudes that conflicted with adolescents’ attitudes. The handful of studies that have compared parent and peer influence during adolescence have yielded inconsistent findings, with reports of no differences ( Chassin et al, 1986 ; van Hoorn et al, 2018 ) or one source outweighing the other, for unconstructive behaviors ( Cook et al, 2009 ; Sawyer and Stevenson, 2008 ) and constructive behaviors ( Malonda et al, 2019 ) alike. To investigate how adolescents reconcile opposing attitudes from both their parents and peers, we leveraged our unique study design to explore whether there were differences in overall rates of conformity toward parents’ or peers’ conflicting attitudes at the behavioral and neural level.…”
Highlights
Early adolescents show overall low rates of conformity to conflicting attitudes.
Adolescents conform more to peers’ attitudes towards constructive than unconstructive behaviors.
Adolescents conform more when parents and peers endorsed positive than negative influence.
vmPFC, dACC, and TPJ activity may underlie context-dependent conformity differences.
“…The dACC is associated with social stress (Schriber et al, 2018), suggesting that the monitoring of a caregiver may induce social motivation to improve performance during adolescence. The fusiform gyrus has been proposed to detect salient social information (Nelson, Leibenluft, McClure, & Pine, 2005) and is implicated during adolescent decisionmaking in the presence of mothers and peers (Guassi Moreira & Telzer, 2018;van Hoorn, McCormick, Rogers, Ivory, & Telzer, 2018). The fusiform gyrus may be integral for adolescent decision-making in the context of salient social others, particularly for aligning performance toward the observing entity's desires (i.e., accuracy for mothers, risk taking for risky peers).…”
Adolescents are more susceptible to dysregulation in positive social contexts, compared to children. We investigated whether maternal presence would buffer these effects in adolescence. Fifty‐four adolescents and children (age range = 8–17 years, Mage = 13.38 years) completed a social go‐nogo task during an fMRI scan alone and in the presence of their mother. We found age‐related patterns, such that older relative to younger youth displayed more disinhibition toward socially appetitive than socially aversive stimuli, which was buffered by maternal presence. Furthermore, with age, maternal buffering in socially appetitive contexts elicited heightened activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala–medial prefrontal cortex connectivity. Findings underscore the importance of caregivers in promoting the neural regulation of their offspring during adolescence.
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