Testing the adolescent social reorientation model during self and other evaluation using hierarchical growth curve modeling with parcellated fMRI data

Neural and behavioural correlates of adolescents changing academic self-concept

BACKGROUND

Mid-adolescence is an important phase of self-development in various domains including academics as well as for changes in the neural mechanisms underlying the self-concept. Students' academic self-concept (ASC) is affected by educational achievements and social others (such as teachers and peers). To what extent these external influences relate to neural dynamics during adolescents' self- and other-evaluations (i.e. of friends and teachers) which affect ASC over time is currently unclear.

AIMS

The current study aimed to address the question of to what extent the developing ASC is influenced by developmental changes in self- and other-evaluations (friends, teachers) and their underlying neural mechanisms as well as academic achievement.

METHODS

In this interdisciplinary longitudinal fMRI study, forty-seven 13-year-olds (at T1) were instructed to indicate whether positive and negative trait adjectives described themselves (self-evaluations), their teachers, or peers (other-evaluations) at two time points. We investigated how adolescents' academic self-concept is influenced by changes in their academic achievement and self- and other-evaluations (teachers and peers) 1.5-years later.

RESULTS

Behaviourally, both, academic achievement and positive teacher evaluations were important to prevent the observed decline in ASC during mid-adolescence. Our fMRI results showed that cortical midline structures were linked to self-evaluation, whereas the precuneus and occipital regions were related to friends- and teacher-evaluation. Here, ASC was predicted by activity changes in the precuneus during friends-evaluations for students with better academic achievement.

CONCLUSION

Our findings indicate that academic achievement and positive teacher-evaluations could prevent the decline in ASC observed in mid-adolescents and that the neural correlates of evaluating close others within the precuneus present an important link to ASC. The current study highlights the importance of educational neuroscience studies to understand the changing ASC during adolescence.

A longitudinal neuroimaging study of adolescent girls' mentalizing and perspective-taking tendencies

Research in developmental psychology suggests that self-concept formation and mentalizing capacities, along with their neural foundations, show significant developmental change during adolescence. Perspective-taking tendencies are also believed to increase in adolescence, supporting the refinement of prosocial behavior and the demands of increasingly complex social relationships. To explore the development of, and relationship between, these processes in adolescence, early adolescent girls (N = 172) completed a measure of perspective-taking tendencies and a self-evaluation fMRI task at two waves, approximately 18 months apart (mean ages = 11.62 and 13.20, respectively). In line with our hypothesis, perspective-taking tendencies were positively associated with age. Greater perspective-taking tendencies were also associated with a more prosocial, and less antisocial, self-concept. In addition, dmPFC activity increased with age, but this did not survive correction for multiple comparisons across all mentalizing regions. Post hoc analyses also showed that an increase in perspective-taking tendencies across waves was significantly associated with activity in parts of the precuneus at wave 2. Finally, while we did not observe cross-variable coupling, our Bivariate Latent Change Score model showed that lower perspective-taking tendencies at wave 1 were associated with greater latent change in this variable (and the same was true for mean activity in mentalizing brain regions).

Development of Self-Concept in Childhood and Adolescence: How Neuroscience Can Inform Theory and Vice Versa

How do we develop a stable and coherent self-concept in contemporary times? Susan Harter's original work, The Construction of Self (1999; 2012), argues that cognitive and social processes are building blocks for developing a coherent sense of self, resulting in self-concept clarity across various domains in life (e.g., [pro-]social, academic, and physical). Here, we show how this framework guides and can benefit from recent findings on (1) the prolonged and nonlinear structural brain development during childhood and adolescence, (2) insights from developmental neuroimaging studies using self-concept appraisal paradigms, (3) genetic and environmental influences on behavioral and neural correlates of self-concept development, and (4) youth's perspectives on self-concept development in the context of 21st century global challenges. We examine how neuroscience can inform theory by testing several compelling questions related to stability versus change of neural, behavioral, and self-report measures and we reflect on the meaning of variability and change/growth.

Revisiting the musical reminiscence bump: insights from neurocognitive and social brain development in adolescence

Music listening is enjoyed across the lifespan and around the world. This has spurred many theories on the evolutionary purpose of music. The Music for Social Bonding hypothesis posits that the human capacity to make music evolved for the purpose of creating and preserving relationships between one another. Considering different time periods of music use across the lifespan, adolescence is especially a period of social reorientation away from family towards peers, characterized by new social bonds and increased prosocial behavior. This shift is accompanied by notable structural and functional changes in brain networks supporting reward processing and prosocial behavior. Reviewing the extant literature on developmental cognitive neuroscience and adolescent music use, we propose that neurocognitive changes in the reward system make adolescence an ideal developmental time window for investigating interactions between prosocial behavior and reward processing, as adolescence constitutes a time of relative increase in music reward valuation. Testing this hypothesis may clarify our understanding of developmental trajectories in music reward valuation, and offer insights into why music from adults' adolescence holds a great deal of personal significance.

A multi-modal assessment of self-knowledge in adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury: a research domains criteria (RDoC) study

BACKGROUND

Adolescence is a critical period for brain development, consolidation of self-understanding, and onset of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). This study evaluated the RDoC (Research Domain Criteria) sub-construct of Self-Knowledge in relation to adolescent NSSI using multiple units of analysis.

METHODS

One hundred and sixty-four adolescents assigned female at birth (AFAB), ages 12-16 years with and without a history of NSSI entered a study involving clinical assessment and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), including structural, resting-state functional MRI (fMRI), and fMRI during a self-evaluation task. For imaging analyses, we used an a priori defined Self Network (anterior cingulate, orbitofrontal, and posterior cingulate cortices; precuneus). We first examined interrelationships among multi-level Self variables. We then evaluated the individual relationships between NSSI severity and multi-level Self variables (self-report, behavior, multi-modal brain Self Network measures), then conducted model testing and multiple regression to test how Self variables (together) predicted NSSI severity.

RESULTS

Cross-correlations revealed key links between self-reported global self-worth and self-evaluation task behavior. Individually, greater NSSI severity correlated with lower global self-worth, more frequent and faster negative self-evaluations, lower anterior Self Network activation during self-evaluation, and lower anterior and posterior Self Network resting-state connectivity. Multiple regression analysis revealed the model including multi-level Self variables explained NSSI better than a covariate-only model; the strongest predictive variables included self-worth, self-evaluation task behavior, and resting-state connectivity.

CONCLUSIONS

Disruptions in Self-Knowledge across multiple levels of analysis relate to NSSI in adolescents. Findings suggest potential neurobiological treatment targets, potentially enhancing neuroplasticity in Self systems to facilitate greater flexibility (more frequently positive) of self-views in AFAB adolescents.

A precision neuroscience approach to estimating reliability of neural responses during emotion processing: Implications for task-fMRI

Recent work demonstrating low test-retest reliability of neural activation during fMRI tasks raises questions about the utility of task-based fMRI for the study of individual variation in brain function. Two possible sources of the instability in task-based BOLD signal over time are noise or measurement error in the instrument, and meaningful variation across time within-individuals in the construct itself-brain activation elicited during fMRI tasks. Examining the contribution of these two sources of test-retest unreliability in task-evoked brain activity has far-reaching implications for cognitive neuroscience. If test-retest reliability largely reflects measurement error, it suggests that task-based fMRI has little utility in the study of either inter- or intra-individual differences. On the other hand, if task-evoked BOLD signal varies meaningfully over time, it would suggest that this tool may yet be well suited to studying intraindividual variation. We parse these sources of variance in BOLD signal in response to emotional cues over time and within-individuals in a longitudinal sample with 10 monthly fMRI scans. Test-retest reliability was low, reflecting a lack of stability in between-person differences across scans. In contrast, within-person, within-session internal consistency of the BOLD signal was higher, and within-person fluctuations across sessions explained almost half the variance in voxel-level neural responses. Additionally, monthly fluctuations in neural response to emotional cues were associated with intraindividual variation in mood, sleep, and exposure to stressors. Rather than reflecting trait-like differences across people, neural responses to emotional cues may be more reflective of intraindividual variation over time. These patterns suggest that task-based fMRI may be able to contribute to the study of individual variation in brain function if more attention is given to within-individual variation approaches, psychometrics-beginning with improving reliability beyond the modest estimates observed here, and the validity of task fMRI beyond the suggestive associations reported here.

The stress-buffering role of friendships in young people with childhood threat experiences: a preliminary report

Background: High-quality friendships have a positive impact on the mental health of young people with childhood adversity (CA). Social stress buffering, the phenomenon of a social partner attenuating acute stress responses, is a potential yet unexplored mechanism that may underlie this relationship.Objective: This study examined whether perceived friendship quality was related to better mental health and lower neural stress response in young people with CA.Method: A total of N = 102 young people (aged 16-26) with low to moderate CA were included in the study. We first investigated associations between friendship quality, mental health, and CA. In a representative subset (n = 62), we assessed neural stress responses using the Montreal Imaging Stress Task. In our sample, CA was best described along two dimensions resembling threat or deprivation like experiences. Hence, we investigated both cumulative and dimensional effects of CA.Results: We found no support for social thinning after CA, meaning that the severity of CA (cumulative or dimensional) did not differentially impact friendship quality. High-quality friendships, on the other hand, were strongly associated with better mental health. Furthermore, acute stress increased state anxiety and enhanced neural activity in five frontolimbic brain regions, including the left hippocampus. We found weak support that threat experiences interacted with friendship quality to predict left hippocampal reactivity to stress. However, this effect did not survive multiple comparison correction.Conclusion: The absence of social thinning in our sample may suggest that the risk of developing impoverished social networks is low for rather well-functioning young people with low to moderate CA. Regardless, our findings align with prior research, consistently showing a strong association between high-quality friendships and better mental health in young people with CA. Future research is needed to examine whether friendships aid neural stress responses in young people with childhood threat experiences.

Neural correlates associated with conformity in adolescent and young adult men

Social influence affects us throughout our lives, shaping our attitudes, behaviors, and preferences. Thus, the current study aimed to examine whether key age groups (adolescence versus young adulthood) were associated with differences in neural correlates associated with processing social feedback and conformity (i.e., conflict detection, positive valuation, and mentalizing) among young men. We recruited 153 participants across 5 studies, who completed a social influence task during an fMRI scan. Overall, participants were more likely to conform by changing their ratings when misaligned with others, and adolescents were more likely to conform when misaligned (compared to aligned) with others compared to young adults. Further, we found that adolescents showed increased activity in mentalizing (TPJ, dmPFC) and positive valuation regions (VS, vmPFC), compared to young adults, in response to misalignment with others. In contrast, young adults showed increased activity in conflict detection regions (AI, dACC) when exposed to feedback that they were misaligned with others and when conforming to that feedback. Overall, our results offer initial evidence that adolescent and young adult men engage different neural processes when they find out they are misaligned with others and when conforming to the recommendations of others, and this difference appears to track with brain responses in conflict detection, mentalizing and value regions. DATA STATEMENT: Raw data and analysis codes are available upon request.

Longitudinal self-concept development in adolescence

This longitudinal behavioral neuroimaging study tested two hypotheses concerning self-concept development in adolescence: domain-specific self-concept and similarity between own (direct) and perceived peers' (reflected) opinions of the self. Participants (N = 189; 10-24 years) evaluated their traits in academic, physical appearance and prosocial domains from direct and reflected perspectives in an functional magnetic resonance imaging session across three time points (TP1: n = 160; TP2: n = 151; TP3: n = 144). Behaviorally, we observed a mid-adolescent dip in self-concept positivity, which was strongest for the academic domain, showing domain differentiation in mid-adolescence. Self-evaluations were associated with activity in, e.g. medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporal-parietal junction (TPJ). mPFC showed an adolescent-emerging peak in activation, pronounced more for direct than reflected self-evaluations. TPJ activation was generally stronger for reflected self-evaluations, and activation linearly increased with age for both reflected and direct self-evaluations. Longitudinal prediction analyses showed that positivity of self-evaluations predicted increases in self-concept clarity and less fear of negative evaluation 1 and 2 years later, highlighting the developmental benefits of acquiring a positive self-concept. Together, we show that adolescent self-development is characterized by dissociable neural patterns underlying self-evaluations in different domains, and from reflected and direct perspectives, confirming adolescence as a formative phase for developing a coherent and positive self-concept.

The neurocomputational bases of explore-exploit decision-making

Flexible decision-making requires animals to forego immediate rewards (exploitation) and try novel choice options (exploration) to discover if they are preferable to familiar alternatives. Using the same task and a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) model to quantify the value of choices, we first determined that the computational basis for managing explore-exploit tradeoffs is conserved across monkeys and humans. We then used fMRI to identify where in the human brain the immediate value of exploitative choices and relative uncertainty about the value of exploratory choices were encoded. Consistent with prior neurophysiological evidence in monkeys, we observed divergent encoding of reward value and uncertainty in prefrontal and parietal regions, including frontopolar cortex, and parallel encoding of these computations in motivational regions including the amygdala, ventral striatum, and orbitofrontal cortex. These results clarify the interplay between prefrontal and motivational circuits that supports adaptive explore-exploit decisions in humans and nonhuman primates.