COGNITIVE AND NEURAL PROCESSES OF DECISION-MAKING IN ADOLESCENCE

本子项目是利用由NIH/NCRR资助的中心赠款提供的资源的众多研究子项目之一。子项目和研究者（PI）可能已经从另一个NIH来源获得了主要资金，因此可以在其他CRISP条目中表示。列出的机构是中心的，不一定是研究者的机构。对药物使用、滥用和依赖的研究表明，它在整个青春期几乎呈线性增长，发病越早，严重程度和发病率越高。这些惊人的发现表明，青春期是药物滥用风险增加的时期，但迄今为止，关于可能使青少年倾向于做出次优选择并导致这一结果的潜在因素知之甚少。本研究旨在研究认知和神经过程的发展，包括情绪和奖励潜在决策的影响，可能使青少年有更大的药物滥用风险。还将研究基于奖励的激励、情感内容和冲动/冒险的操纵在多大程度上可能会影响决策。强化学习的正式模型和决策原则以及功能神经影像学将用于约束我们对决策中发育和个体行为差异的假设和解释。这些研究将通过绘制决策背后的认知和神经过程的典型发展轨迹，为随后的药物滥用发展研究奠定关键基础。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Studies of substance use, abuse and dependence suggests that it increases almost linearly throughout adolescence with earlier onset predicting greater severity and morbidity. These striking findings suggest adolescence is a period of increased risk for substance abuse, yet little is known to date, about the underlying factors that may predispose adolescents to suboptimal choices leading to this outcome. This study proposes to examine the development of cognitive and neural processes including effects of emotion and reward underlying decision-making that may place adolescents at greater risk for substance abuse. The extent to which manipulations of reward-based incentives, emotional content and impulsivity/risk-taking may bias decision-making will also be examined. Formal models of reinforcement learning and principles of decision-making together with functional neuroimaging will be used to constrain our hypotheses and interpretations about developmental and individual behavioral differences in decision-making. These studies will lay the critical groundwork for subsequent developmental studies on substance abuse, by mapping the typical developmental trajectory of cognitive and neural processes underlying decision-making.