Positive risk taking and neural sensitivity to risky decision making in adolescence

This study examines associations between adolescents’ positive risk taking and neural activation during risky decision-making. Participants included 144 adolescents ages 13–16 years (M(age) = 14.23; SD(age) = 0.7) from diverse racial and ethnic groups. Participants self-reported their engagement in positive and negative risk taking. Additionally, participants played the Cups task during fMRI, where they chose between a safe choice (guaranteed earning of 15 cents) and a risky choice (varying probabilities of earning more than 15 cents). Using a risk-return framework, we examined adolescents’ sensitivity to both risks (safe versus risky) and returns (expected value, or potential reward as a function of its probability of occurring) at the behavioral and neural levels. All participants took more risks when the expected value of the choice was high. However, high positive risk taking was uniquely associated with dampened dmPFC tracking of expected value. Together, results show that adolescents’ positive risk taking is associated with neural activity during risky decision-making. Findings are among the first to identify brain-behavior correlations associated with positive risk taking during adolescence.