Neurodevelopmental Pathways in Adolescent Health Risk Behavior

描述（由申请人提供）：基于大脑边缘的“自下而上”系统，其特征是对动机刺激和奖励的反应性增强，从青春期早期开始迅速成熟，而前额叶组织的“自上而下”系统，能够更有效地进行认知控制和判断，成熟得更慢（Casey & Jones, 2010）。这种不匹配被认为是青少年健康风险行为的一个关键因素，这一点至关重要，因为：(1)风险行为是这一年龄组发病率和死亡率的主要原因，包括无保护的性行为引起的疾病和鲁莽行为造成的伤亡（包括驾驶死亡和重伤）；(2)这是一系列具有潜在长期后果的危险行为模式（包括物质使用和滥用以及犯罪）出现的高峰年龄。然而，发育成熟度错配假说并没有直接测试风险行为，其水平足以为这一关键健康领域提供信息（Pfeifer & Allen, 2012）。本研究的主要目的是通过综合分析年龄差异、发育轨迹以及心理社会、神经认知和神经成像评估方面的个体差异，了解冒险行为的行为、认知和神经基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Limbic-based "bottom-up" systems characterized by heightened reactivity to motivational stimuli and rewards mature rapidly from early adolescence, while prefrontally-organized "top- down" systems that enable more effective cognitive control and judgment mature more slowly (Casey & Jones, 2010). This mismatch has been proposed as a key contributor to health risk behavior among adolescents, which is of critical importance because: (1) risk behaviors are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in this age group, including diseases arising from unprotected sexual activity and casualties arising from reckless behavior (including driving fatalities and serious injuries); (2) it is the peak age for the onset f a wide range of risk behavior patterns with potential long-term consequences, including substance use and abuse, and delinquency. The developmental maturity mismatch hypothesis, however, has not been directly tested in relation to risk behavior at a level sufficient to inform this critcal health area (Pfeifer & Allen, 2012). The primary aim of the proposed research is to understand the behavioral, cognitive, and neural bases of risk taking, through integrated analyses of age differences, developmental trajectories, and individual differences in psychosocial, neurocognitive and neural imaging assessments.