The development of neural emotion and reward processing circuitry over adolescence and its relations to parenting

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The long-term objectives of my program of research are to thoroughly characterize the normative development of brain functioning during adolescence and to understand how environmental experiences influence this development. This research will provide fundamental insight into typical brain development and factors that influence this development. Emotional and reward processing are core neural processes that influence behaviour and cognition in a variety of domains including learning, academic achievement, interpersonal interactions, decision making, and goal pursuit. Understanding the development of neural circuitry that underpins these processes is therefore highly important. Prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions exert top-down inhibitory control over the amygdala's automatic responses to emotionally salient stimuli. Amygdala-PFC functional connectivity thereby governs neural and emotional responses to emotionally salient stimuli. The ventral striatum (VS) is the striatal region most closely associated with reward processing and has bidirectional connections with the PFC. As such, VS-PFC connectivity is a key circuit governing neural responses to rewards. Yet, little is known about the typical development of these circuits. As such, the first short-term objective of this research is to understand the normative development over adolescence of functional connectivity of these circuits. The second short-term objective is to understand how parental care influences this development. Functional connectivity is measured using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) via the temporal correlation between neuronal signals in different brain regions. Participants will be 200 adolescents aged 12-17 (50% female) and at least one parent from the community. At baseline, 18 months, and 36 months follow-ups, adolescents will complete fMRI scans including an emotional face processing and monetary gain-loss task to respectively measure neural correlates of emotion and reward processing. Participants and one parent will complete lab-based observations of parent-adolescent interactions to assess parental care. This task involves planning an enjoyable activity as well as discussing and solving problems identified by the parent and adolescent. Two independent raters will code interactions for affection, involvement, and support (i.e., parental care) expressed towards the adolescent. They will both also complete questionnaire measures of parenting behaviours. Analyses will examine individual trajectories over adolescence of amygdala-PFC connectivity during emotion processing and VS-PFC connectivity during reward processing. Individual trajectories will then be predicted by parental care assessed over the study interval to determine whether parenting is related to growth in the connectivity in these circuits across adolescence. Future research will examine similar influences such as peer and romantic relationships, and academic achievement.