Family conflict is associated with longitudinal changes in insular‐striatal functional connectivity during adolescent risk taking under maternal influence. Issue 5 (11th December 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Guassi Moreira, João F.; Telzer, Eva H.
• Is Part Of: Developmental science. Volume 21:Issue 5(2018)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2017-12-11
• Subjects: Developmental psychology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 155
• DOI: 10.1111/desc.12632
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-755X

Abstract

Abstract: Maternal presence has marked effects on adolescent neurocognition during risk taking, influencing teenagers to make safer decisions. However, it is currently unknown whether maternal buffering changes over the course of adolescence itself, and whether its effects are robust to individual differences in family relationship quality. In the current longitudinal study, 23 adolescents completed a risk‐taking task under maternal presence during an fMRI scan before and after the transition to high school. Behavioral results reveal that adolescent risk taking increased under maternal presence across a one‐year period. At the neural level, we found that adolescents reporting higher family conflict showed longitudinal increases in functional coupling between the anterior insula (AI) and ventral striatum (VS) when making safe decisions in the presence of their mother, which was associated with increased real‐world risk taking. These findings show that individual differences in family relationship quality undermine effective development of AI‐VS connectivity resulting in increased risk taking. Abstract : Although maternal buffering effects had been previously shown to reduce adolescent risk taking by interacting with motivational circuitry in the brain, the longitudinal dynamics of this effect were previously unknown. Using fMRI, we revealed that adolescents who reported greater family conflict with their parents displayed increases in anterior insula‐ventral striatum connectivity‐‐a key circuit for adolescent decision making‐‐over the span of a year. That such increases in connectivity were associated with self‐reported risk taking outside the lab, underscoring how the maternal buffering effect on risk‐taking is not uniform within adolescence.