Sviluppo cerebrale, processi decisionali e psicopatologia in adolescenza
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Summary Aims Both epidemiologic data and everyday life experience show that adolescents adopt risktaking behaviours, that increase the morbidity and mortality rates, despite a general body strengthening. This phenomenon could suggest the presence of a still immature capacity of judgement and evaluation of consequences of one own actions. Recent evidence, from neuroscience, gives a possible explanation for this kind of adolescent behaviour. New studies on neuroeconomics describe the prefrontal cortex as one of the most important centres of the neural circuits involved in decision-making. Longitudinal studies with structural neuroimaging techniques show that the prefrontal cortex undergoes important changes during adolescence, in terms of synapse number and myelination. If affective executive functions, especially decision-making processes, are based on prefrontal cortex areas that mature during adolescence, it is possible to deem that adolescent decision-making is still a work in progress, and this could contribute to better explain their risk-taking behaviours. These data then have to be related with the several psychopathological disorders with an adolescence onset. Methods The author first analyzed the evidence from the literature (PubMed, PsycInfo) regarding adolescent brain development and the neural basis of decision-making in healthy and brain-damaged subjects. Particular attention was focused on the recent findings from the new interdisciplinary field of neuroeconomics. Literature regarding the cognitive, affective and behavioural correlates of adolescent brain development was then analyzed and summarized. Results Current evidence suggests that the adolescent brain undergoes a marked structural and functional maturation, due to processes of myelination and synaptic pruning. These brain changes lead to maturation also of cognitive and affective processes based on the prefrontal cortex, the cortical area that undergoes the strongest and longest change, until early adulthood. Decision-making skills develop during adolescence but performances in choice tasks show a preference for immediate rewards despite possible higher or more remunerative rewards. Some implications of these immature decision-making skills are discussed, based on preliminary models that attempt to take into account these new empirical data and to link them with adolescence-onset psychopathologies. Conclusions Further research is needed to better understand the maturational patterns of decisionmaking skills during adolescence towards adult-like levels of performances. These empirical data then need to be integrated in a more complex model that explains risktaking behaviours of adolescents. A partially unexplored field is the study of how the cognitive and affective processes based on prefrontal cortex mature in subjects with developmental psychopathologies like conduct disorder, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, mood and anxiety disorders. Then further research is needed to establish the efficacy of programs that try to improve adolescent behaviours by a prolonged executive function training.
Author: Michele Poletti
Language: Italian
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W165392688