Emotion, Cognition and the Adolescent Brain

Some accounts of adolescents liken them to “mini-adults”, whose psychological capabilities consistently fall between that of younger and older individuals. However, some psychological changes during adolescence are unique relative to older and younger individuals, such as increases in the frequency of risk-taking and mood and anxiety dsyregulation. Using healthy human participants ranging in age from childhood to early adulthood, my lab's research aims to reveal how neurodevelopmentally-mediated shifts in circuit-level brain function contribute to changes in motivational, emotional, and social behavior during adolescence. My talk will explore how normative trajectories of subcortical and cortical circuitry interactions relate to unique sensitivities to emotional and motivational cues during adolescence, and their impact on regulatory functioning. Ultimately, the aims of this work are threefold: to improve fundamental understanding of human neurodevelopment in the second decade of life, to inform relationships between circuit-level brain function and human behavioral outcomes, and to gain insight into the mechanisms underlying health risks that emerge during adolescence.