title: Is there heightened sensitivity to social reward in adolescence?
abstract: During adolescence, individuals are particularly susceptible to social influence. One explanation for this is that social stimuli have a heightened reward value at this age. To date, most evidence for heightened social reward in adolescence is found in the animal literature. Human adolescents show increased activation in fronto-striatal brain regions to rewarding social stimuli, but also to negative social stimuli, suggesting that adolescence may be a period of hypersensitivity to all social stimuli. Additional evidence from humans and animals suggest that the presence of others may heighten the value of non-social rewards; these findings should be incorporated into theories of social reward in adolescence.
authors.affiliation: Developmental Group, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17-19 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom. Electronic address: l.foulkes@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Lucy
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Foulkes
authors.affiliation: Developmental Group, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17-19 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Sarah-Jayne
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Blakemore
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000818:Animals; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012201:Reward