Improving Adolescent Decision Making Through Cognitive Control Training

描述（由申请人提供）：我们实验室最近的工作表明，在青春期，不同大脑系统的异步发育模式会产生一段时间，对情感刺激的敏感性增加，认知控制能力减弱。 特别是在情感突出的同伴环境中，这种调节失衡可能导致青少年参与危险行为的倾向增加（例如，药物使用、无保护的性活动和鲁莽驾驶），严重威胁他们的健康和福祉。 在单独的工作中，我们和其他人已经证明了通过有针对性的工作记忆（WM）训练来改善成年人认知控制的潜力。 在目前的建议中，我们的目标是弥合这两条线的研究，使用行为和神经影像学的方法来测试一种新的应用WM培训，以促进青少年的认知控制能力，从而减少冒险。 我们假设青少年对冲动和自动行为的控制，特别是在情感突出的情况下，可以通过有针对性的适应性复杂工作记忆训练来提高。 我们进一步假设，这种改善的认知控制将产生训练有素的青少年参与者增强审议决策技能，从而减少他们的倾向冒险。 使用功能磁共振成像，我们将描述这些行为变化的机制。 PI和co-PI最近有成功合作的历史，并结合了认知控制的认知神经科学和青少年和年轻人的心理社会发展方面的专业知识。拟议的研究有可能极大地告知青少年行为的理论模型，产生影响青少年决策的过程的基本见解，以确定是否可以通过训练加速认知控制的成熟时间表，并产生一个低成本的干预措施，以减少青少年的风险行为。 公共卫生相关性：过度冒险行为（药物使用、鲁莽驾驶、犯罪等）是对青少年健康和福祉的最大威胁。 青少年的冒险行为经常发生在充满情感的环境中，这可能是影响决策的认知控制和奖励处理大脑系统不协调成熟的结果。 这些研究将运用行为学和功能磁共振成像方法，研究使用目标工作记忆（WM）训练来改善与认知控制相关的大脑区域功能的可行性，从而提高青少年对风险决策的自我调节控制能力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent work in our lab suggests that, during adolescence, asynchronous patterns of development across different brain systems produce a period of increased sensitivity to affective stimuli and diminished capacity for cognitive control. Especially in affectively salient peer contexts, this regulatory imbalance may contribute to adolescents' increased proclivity to engage in risky behaviors (e.g., substance use, unprotected sexual activity, and reckless driving) that significantly threaten their health and well-being. In separate work, we and others have demonstrated the potential to improve adults' cognitive control through targeted working memory (WM) training. In the present proposal, we aim to bridge these two lines of research by using behavioral and neuroimaging methods to test a novel application of WM training to promote adolescents' cognitive control capabilities, and thus reduce risk taking. We hypothesize that adolescents' control over impulsive and automatic behaviors, especially in affectively salient contexts, can be improved through a targeted program of adaptive complex WM training. We further hypothesize that such improved cognitive control will engender trained adolescent participants with enhanced deliberative decision making skills, and hence reduce their proclivity toward risk taking. Using fMRI, we will characterize the mechanisms that underlie these behavioral changes. The PI and co-PI have a recent history of successful collaboration, and combined expertise in the cognitive neuroscience of cognitive control and the psychosocial development of adolescents and young adults. The proposed studies have the potential to greatly inform theoretical models of adolescent behavior, to yield fundamental insights into the processes that affect adolescent decision-making, to determine whether the maturational timetable of cognitive control can be accelerated through training, and to yield a low-cost intervention for reducing adolescent risk behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Excessive risk-taking behavior (substance use, reckless driving, crime, etc.) is the most significant threat to adolescents' health and well-being. Adolescent risk-taking frequently occurs in affectively charged contexts, likely as a result of discordant maturation in the cognitive control and reward processing brain systems that influence decision making. The proposed studies will deploy behavioral and fMRI methodologies to examine the feasibility of using targeted working memory (WM) training to improve brain function in regions associated with cognitive control, and hence increase adolescent' capability to exert self-regulatory control over risky decision making.