Longitudinal study of striatal activation to reward and loss anticipation from mid-adolescence into late adolescence/early adulthood.

Adolescent risk-taking behavior has been associated with age-related changes in striatal activation to incentives. Previous cross-sectional studies have shown both increased and decreased striatal activation to incentives for adolescents compared to adults. The monetary incentive delay (MID) task, designed to assess functional brain activation in anticipation of reward, has been used extensively to examine striatal activation in both adult and adolescent populations. The current study used this task with a longitudinal approach across mid-adolescence and late adolescence/early adulthood. Twenty-two participants (13 male) were studied using the MID task at two time-points, once in mid-adolescence (mean age=16.11; SD=1.44) and a second time in late adolescence/early adulthood (mean age=20.14; SD=.67). Results revealed greater striatal activation with increased age in high- compared to low-incentive contexts (incentive magnitude), for gain as well as for loss trials (incentive valence). Results extend cross-sectional findings and show reduced striatal engagement in adolescence compared to adulthood during preparation for action in an incentive context.

Early childhood temperament predicts substance use in young adults.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) is an important early childhood marker of risk for later psychiatric problems. The current 20-year prospective, longitudinal study focused on individual differences in this early temperament and adolescent brain function. As adolescents, 83 participants initially identified in infancy with the temperament of BI were assessed using functional imaging to examine striatal responses to incentives. Five years later, as young adults, these participants provided self-report of their substance use. Our findings show that children's early temperament interacts with their striatal sensitivity to incentives in adolescence to predict their level of substance use in young adulthood. Those young adults who, as children, showed the highest levels of BI reported the greatest substance use if, as adolescents, they also exhibited striatal hypersensitivity to incentives. These longitudinal data delineate one developmental pathway involving early biology and brain mechanisms for substance use in young adulthood.

Association of DRD4 with attention problems in normal childhood development.

Several previous studies found an association of clinically diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with long alleles of a variation in the DRD4 dopamine receptor gene exon III coding sequence. We evaluated the DRD4 polymorphism in a non-clinically selected sample of children for whom maternal reports of attention problems were available at 4 and 7 years of age. There was a significant elevation in attention problem scores in children carrying DRD4 long alleles that accounted for 3-4% of total variation at each age and for 5-7% of the temporally stable component of the phenotype. Our results show that the DRD4 gene influences normal as well as pathological attention processes, and the results highlight the utility of longitudinal measurements in psychiatric genetics.