Neural response to rewards predicts risk-taking in late but not early adolescent females

Risk-taking peaks in adolescence and reflects, in part, hyperactivity of the brain’s reward system. However, it has not been established whether the association between reward-related brain activity and risk-taking varies across adolescence. The present study investigated how neural reward sensitivity is associated with laboratory risk-taking in a sample of female adolescents as a function of age. Sixty-three female adolescents ages 10–19 completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, a laboratory measure of risk-taking behavior, as well as a forced choice monetary gambling task while an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. This gambling task elicits the reward positivity (RewP), a frontocentral event-related potential component that is sensitive to feedback signaling reward. We observed a negative quadratic association between age and risk-taking, such that those in early and late adolescence had lower relative risk-taking compared to mid-adolescence, with risk-taking peaking at around 15 years of age. In predicting risk-taking, we observed an interaction between age and RewP, such that reward-related brain activity was not associated with risk-taking in early adolescence but was associated with a greater propensity for risk in later adolescence. These findings suggest that for females, neural response to rewards is an important factor in predicting risk-taking only in later adolescence.