Why Risk Taking Behavior Increases During Adolescence Neuroscience News October 17, 2016

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http://neurosciencenews.com/risk-taking-adolescence-5304/

Were you an extreme risk taker growing up? Did your parents express a concern about your behavior as an adolescent? In this article, researchers have discovered a strong correlation between imbalanced brain activity and behavioral control that adolescents experience. While it is expected that adolescents take risks and venture on their own, it is devastating when during adolescence people have outbursts and begin to be involved in dangerous activity, such as taking drugs. In previous studies, researchers found that adolescents have difficulty suppressing risk-taking behavior due to the low activity in the prefrontal cortex along with high activity in the nucleus accumbens. Heidi C. Meyer conducted a study using a chemogenetic approach, known as Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs) in order to recreate the imbalance that an adolescent would have in their brain. The experiment included adult rats with relatively normal activity within the prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. DREADD was used in order to decrease the prefrontal cortex activity and increase the nucleus accumbens, all while the rats learned a task. The task involved a food reward symbolized by a tone and a light signal that meant no food that followed shortly after. Researchers concluded from the activity that the rats exhibited a delay in learning to inhibit their response to the tone when the light came shortly after.

 In class, we learned that the prefrontal cortex is involved in organizing, impulse control, and adjustments in behavior in response to rewards and punishments. The nucleus accumbens contains a role in reward and addiction. With low activity in the prefrontal cortex, an adolescent will not be able to control impulses or make the right decision. If an adolescent has low ability to control impulses and contains high activity in the nucleus accumbens, the reward of completing a dangerous activity will resonate with the brain. More studies must be conducted in order to further understand these areas in relation to behavior at different developmental stages.

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