AUTHOR=McCormick Ethan M. , Qu Yang , Telzer Eva H. TITLE=Activation in Context: Differential Conclusions Drawn from Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses of Adolescents’ Cognitive Control-Related Neural Activity JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=11 YEAR=2017 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00141 DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2017.00141 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=
Although immature cognitive control, subserved by late-developing prefrontal regions, has been proposed to underlie increased risk taking during adolescence, it remains unclear what patterns of PFC activation represent mature brain states: more or less activation? One challenge to drawing cogent conclusions from extant work stems from its reliance on single-time point neuroimaging and cross-sectional comparisons, which are ill-suited for assessing the complex changes that characterize adolescence. This necessitates longitudinal fMRI work to track within-subject changes in PFC function and links to risk-taking behavior, which can serve as an external marker for maturation of neural systems involved in cognitive control. In the current study, 20 healthy adolescents (13 males) completed a go/nogo task during two fMRI scans, once at age 14 years and again at age 15 years. We found that the association between cognitive control-related VLPFC activation and risk-taking behavior reversed when examining wave 1 (W1) versus longitudinal change (W2 > W1) and wave 2 (W2) in neural activation, such that increased VLPFC activation at W1 was associated with