Is there heightened sensitivity to social reward in adolescence?

Abstract

During adolescence, individuals are particularly susceptible to social influence. One explanation for this is that social stimuli have a heightened reward value at this age. To date, most evidence for heightened social reward in adolescence is found in the animal literature. Human adolescents show increased activation in fronto-striatal brain regions to rewarding social stimuli, but also to negative social stimuli, suggesting that adolescence may be a period of hypersensitivity to all social stimuli. Additional evidence from humans and animals suggest that the presence of others may heighten the value of non-social rewards; these findings should be incorporated into theories of social reward in adolescence.

Sex differences in the neural underpinnings of social and monetary incentive processing during adolescence

“…In everyday life, rewards and punishments are often of a monetary (e.g., monetary bonus or fine) or social character (e.g., social praise or rejection). In the past years, there has been a growing interest in studying the neurobiological bases of both social and monetary incentive processing in healthy adolescents and adults (Foulkes & Blakemore, 2016;Sescousse, Caldú, Segura, & Dreher, 2013;van Duijvenvoorde, Peters, Braams, & Crone, 2016), thereby applying different methodological approaches, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), eventrelated potentials (ERPs), and positron emission tomography (PET). More recently, researchers have begun to investigate dysfunctions in the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of these types of incentives in youth and adults suffering from psychiatric disorders that affect the brain's reward system, such as social anxiety disorder, autism, or attention-Ellen Greimel and Sarolta Bakos contributed equally to this work Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-018-0570-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.…”

“…Of note, studies focusing on healthy adolescents in this field of research are particularly scarce. However, research on the neural underpinnings of sex differences in social and monetary incentive processing during adolescence is important for the following reason: The brain's reward system undergoes major changes in the transitional phase between childhood and adulthood with adolescents showing an increased reactivity to social and nonsocial incentives (Foulkes & Blakemore, 2016;van Duijvenvoorde et al, 2016). Adolescence has been described as a developmental period where social signals (such as social approval) and interactions become increasingly important and motivationally relevant.…”

Four Mechanistic Models of Peer Influence on Adolescent Cannabis Use

“…Increased sociability and deliberate formation of social relationships emerge, along with increased emotional salience of experiences with peers [41]. As such, the regulatory and motivational systems of the brain become essential for seeking out relationships with peers, appraising oneself among peers, monitoring delayed goals of social affiliation, coping with negative peer experiences, and coordinating social approach/withdrawal behaviors [4,42]. Empirical work using fMRI has implicated the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) in adolescent response to peer social feedback [43–45].…”

“…The VS has also consistently played a role in social evaluation studies, with findings of a linear increase with age in the VS during anticipation of peer acceptance [9], particularly for adolescent girls [46], and enhanced VS responses to peer acceptance compared with peer rejection [9,43]. Overall, the empirical evidence suggests that social experiences represent a specific class of reward for which adolescents experience heightened neural sensitivity [42]. Thus, it stands to reason that social facilitation of cannabis use in adolescence may involve emotional investment in the social rewards (i.e., peer affiliation) inherent in the cannabis use context.…”

Individual differences in social reward and threat expectancies linked to grey matter volumes in key regions of the social brain

“…[25][26][27] Sensitivity to social reward and threat are similarly stable, 28 although both appear to be heightened during adolescence. 29 These stable traits are associated with the likelihood of being socially connected or, conversely, isolated. 3 It has been suggested that sophisticated neural-cognitive systems for calibrating social approach/avoidance motivation (and behaviour) evolved as a means of regulating hierarchies in complex primate societies.…”