Review
Neurobiology of the Adolescent Brain and Behavior: Implications for Substance Use Disorders

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Objective

Adolescence is a developmental period that entails substantial changes in risk-taking behavior and experimentation with alcohol and drugs. Understanding how the brain is changing during this period relative to childhood and adulthood and how these changes vary across individuals are key in predicting risk for later substance abuse and dependence.

Method

This review discusses recent human imaging and animal work in the context of an emerging view of adolescence as characterized by a tension between early emerging “bottom-up” systems that express exaggerated reactivity to motivational stimuli and later maturing “top-down” cognitive control regions. Behavioral, clinical, and neurobiological evidences are reported for dissociating these two systems developmentally. The literature on the effects of alcohol and its rewarding properties in the brain is discussed in the context of these two systems.

Results

Collectively, these studies show curvilinear development of motivational behavior and the underlying subcortical brain regions, with a peak inflection from 13 to 17 years. In contrast, prefrontal regions, important in top-down regulation of behavior, show a linear pattern of development well into young adulthood that parallels that seen in behavioral studies of impulsivity.

Conclusions

The tension or imbalance between these developing systems during adolescence may lead to cognitive control processes being more vulnerable to incentive-based modulation and increased susceptibility to the motivational properties of alcohol and drugs. As such, behavior challenges that require cognitive control in the face of appetitive cues may serve as useful biobehavioral markers for predicting which teens may be at greater risk for alcohol and substance dependence.

Section snippets

Neurobiological Model of Adolescence

A neurobiological model of adolescent development2 that builds on rodent models13, 14 and recent imaging studies of adolescence6, 7, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 is depicted Figure 1.21 This model illustrates how subcortical and prefrontal top-down control regions must be considered together as a circuit. The cartoon shows different developmental trajectories for signaling of these regions, with limbic projections developing sooner than prefrontal control regions. According to the model, the

Phenotypic Characterization of Adolescence

The ability to resist temptation in favor of long-term goals is a form of cognitive control. Lapses in this ability have been suggested to be at the very core of adolescent risky behavior.28 Cognitive control, which includes resistance from temptation or delay of immediate gratification, has been studied in the context of social, developmental, and cognitive psychology. Developmentally, this ability has been measured by assessing how long a toddler can resist an immediate reward (e.g., a

Neurobiology of Adolescence

As denoted in our model of adolescence, two key regions implicated in cognitive and motivational behaviors are the prefrontal cortex, known to be important for cognitive control,44 and the striatum, critical in detecting and learning about novel and rewarding cues in the environment.45 We highlight recent animal and human imaging work on neurobiological changes supporting these motivational and cognitive systems across development in the context of the previous behavioral findings on the

Substance Use and Abuse in Adolescents

Adolescence marks a period of increased experimentation with drugs and alcohol,93 with alcohol being the most abused of illegal substances by teens.11, 94, 95 Early use of these substances, such as alcohol, is a reliable predictor of later dependence and abuse.96 Given the surge in alcohol dependence between adolescence and adulthood that is unequaled at any other developmental stage,97 we focus predominantly on a select review of its use and abuse in adolescents and motivational properties.

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  • Cited by (0)

    This work was supported in part by NIDAR01 DA018879, NIDA Pre-Doctoral training grant DA007274, the Mortimer D. Sackler family, the Dewitt-Wallace fund, and the Weill Cornell Medical College Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center and Imaging Core.

    Disclosure: Dr. Casey and Ms. Jones report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

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