Heightened activity in social reward networks is associated with adolescents’ risky sexual behaviors

Eckstrand, Kristen; Choukas‐Bradley, Sophia; Mohanty, Arpita; Cross, Marissa; Allen, Nicholas; Silk, Jennifer S.; Jones, Neil P.; Forbes, Erika E.

doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2017.07.004

Cited by 30 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 68 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Main regions within the cluster, cluster size, peak t-value within the cluster as well as the corresponding MNI coordinates for the clusters with cluster size above 10 are shown in the table (L, left; R, right; L/R, bilateral). Higher-risk sexual behaviors in adolescents are correlated with increased activation in right precuneus and temporal gyrus during receipt of social reward and increased precuneus functional connectivity with other regions (Eckstrand et al, 2017). Our results may provide evidence that the gender differences in left putamen activity associated with reward anticipation already exist in adolescence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Mapping adolescent reward anticipation, receipt, and prediction error during the monetary incentive delay task

Cao

Bennett

Orr

et al. 2018

Human Brain Mapping

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The functional neuroanatomy and connectivity of reward processing in adults are well documented, with relatively less research on adolescents, a notable gap given this developmental period's association with altered reward sensitivity. Here, a large sample (n = 1,510) of adolescents performed the monetary incentive delay (MID) task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Probabilistic maps identified brain regions that were reliably responsive to reward anticipation and receipt, and to prediction errors derived from a computational model. Psychophysiological interactions analyses were used to examine functional connections throughout reward processing. Bilateral ventral striatum, pallidum, insula, thalamus, hippocampus, cingulate cortex, midbrain, motor area, and occipital areas were reliably activated during reward anticipation. Bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex and bilateral thalamus exhibited positive and negative activation, respectively, during reward receipt. Bilateral ventral striatum was reliably active following prediction errors. Previously, individual differences in the personality trait of sensation seeking were shown to be related to individual differences in sensitivity to reward outcome. Here, we found that sensation seeking scores were negatively correlated with right inferior frontal gyrus activity following reward prediction errors estimated using a computational model. Psychophysiological interactions demonstrated widespread cortical and subcortical connectivity during reward processing, including connectivity between reward‐related regions with motor areas and the salience network. Males had more activation in left putamen, right precuneus, and middle temporal gyrus during reward anticipation. In summary, we found that, in adolescents, different reward processing stages during the MID task were robustly associated with distinctive patterns of activation and of connectivity.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Mapping adolescent reward anticipation, receipt, and prediction error during the monetary incentive delay task

Cao

Bennett

Orr

et al. 2018

Human Brain Mapping

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The factor was tested with confirmatory factor analysis in a sample of 174 community adolescents and then replicated in a sample of 4135 16-year-old adolescents from the 2009 CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, with good fit and a unidimensional factor structure in both samples (see Youssef et al , 2016 for factor loadings in both samples). All 10 items in the factor were included in this study, as in previous work ( Eckstrand et al , 2017 ). Raw scores were used in analyses, as they were highly correlated with scores adjusted for factor loadings.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The social and self-processing network includes the temporoparietal junction, which is implicated in theory of mind and responds to social reward (e.g. Eckstrand et al , 2017 ); the medial PFC, which processes both social and self-relevant information; and the posterior cingulate and precuneus, a combined hub of the default-mode network with a role in self-referential, autobiographical and agentic processing ( Nelson et al , 2005 ; Northoff and Hayes, 2011 ; Blakemore and Mills, 2014 ). Other regions contribute to multiple networks involved in processing social reward.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temptations of friends: adolescents’ neural and behavioral responses to best friends predict risky behavior

Ambrosia

Eckstrand

Morgan

et al. 2018

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Adolescents are notorious for engaging in risky, reward-motivated behavior, and this behavior occurs most often in response to social reward, typically in the form of peer contexts involving intense positive affect. A combination of greater neural and behavioral sensitivity to peer positive affect may characterize adolescents who are especially likely to engage in risky behaviors. To test this hypothesis, we examined 50 adolescents’ reciprocal positive affect and neural response to a personally relevant, ecologically valid pleasant stimulus: positive affect expressed by their best friend during a conversation about past and future rewarding mutual experiences. Participants were typically developing community adolescents (age 14–18 years, 48.6% female), and risky behavior was defined as a factor including domains such as substance use, sexual behavior and suicidality. Adolescents who engaged in more real-life risk-taking behavior exhibited either a combination of high reciprocal positive affect behavior and high response in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex—a region associated with impulsive sensation-seeking—or the opposite combination. Behavioral and neural sensitivity to peer influence could combine to contribute to pathways from peer influence to risky behavior, with implications for healthy development.

show abstract

“…Finally, while images of all genders were included in the individualized paradigms, we did not control for attraction and it is likely that all participants felt some degree of romantic/sexual attraction to some of the peer images irrespective of sexual orientation. While there is evidence for neural correlates of sexual reward and attraction (Gola et al, 2015; Eckstrand et al, 2017), whether there are detectable neural differences between SMA and heterosexual adolescents remains unclear. The degree to which sexual/romantic attraction is influencing the presented results is unknown and is a potential area for future research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social and Non-social Reward Processing and Depressive Symptoms Among Sexual Minority Adolescents

Eckstrand

Flores

Cross

et al. 2019

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sexual minority adolescents (SMA) are more likely to suffer from depression, putatively through experiences of social stress and victimization interfering with processing of social reward. Alterations in neural reward networks, which develop during adolescence, confer risk for the development of depression. Employing both social and monetary reward fMRI tasks, this is the first neuroimaging study to examine function in reward circuitry as a potential mechanism of mental health disparities between SMA and heterosexual adolescents. Eight SMA and 38 heterosexual typically developing adolescents completed self-report measures of depression and victimization, and underwent fMRI during monetary and peer social reward tasks in which they received positive monetary or social feedback, respectively. Compared with heterosexual adolescents, SMA had greater interpersonal depressive symptoms and exhibited blunted neural responses to social, but not monetary, reward in socioaffective processing regions that are associated with depressive symptoms. Specifically, compared with heterosexual adolescents, SMA exhibited decreased activation in the right medial prefrontal cortex, left anterior insula (AI), and right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) in response to being liked. Lower response in the right TPJ was associated with greater interpersonal depressive symptoms. These results suggest that interpersonal difficulties and the underlying substrates of response to social reward (perhaps more so than response to monetary reward) may confer risk for development of depressive symptoms in SMA.

show abstract

Heightened activity in social reward networks is associated with adolescents’ risky sexual behaviors

Cited by 30 publications

References 68 publications

Mapping adolescent reward anticipation, receipt, and prediction error during the monetary incentive delay task

Mapping adolescent reward anticipation, receipt, and prediction error during the monetary incentive delay task

Temptations of friends: adolescents’ neural and behavioral responses to best friends predict risky behavior

Social and Non-social Reward Processing and Depressive Symptoms Among Sexual Minority Adolescents

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About