Jason M. Chein - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Two of the strongest influences on young adult risk taking decisions are alcohol use and social context. Yet the principal investigator the known potency of each factor in individually inducing risk-taking among youth, and the principal investigator the frequency with which young people consume alcohol in the presence of their peers, no prior research has sought to examine their concurrent and potentially interactive effects. In our model of decision-making in adolescence and young adulthood, asynchronous maturational changes in the brain's cognitive control and reward processing systems yield a period of increased proclivity for risk, and increased susceptibility to specific influences on decision-making. We hypothesize that alcohol and peer influences have their primary impacts on separate components of the brain's decision-making circuitry, with alcohol-affecting regions most closely linked to cognitive control, and peer influence acting upon the reward processing system. The combination of these individually deleterious influences may thus create a powerful "risk-taking cocktail" that disrupts processing within normally offsetting components of the brain's decision-making circuitry, and thereby increases the tendency to engage in risk-taking behaviors with potentially serious consequences (e.g. reckless driving, risky sexual activity, crime). The present application includes behavioral studies designed to test the main and interactive effects of acute alcohol consumption and peer influence on young adults'decisions about risk, as well as an fMRI studies designed to test our neurobiological framework for adolescent and young adult decision-making and the associated hypothesis regarding the separate neural loci of alcohol and social influences. In order to conduct these studies, a research team with combined expertise in the cognitive neuroscience of executive function, the psychosocial development of adolescents and young adults, and the influences of alcohol on cognition and affect, has been assembled. The proposed studies will yield fundamental insights into the effects of social context and alcohol on young adults'risk-taking behaviors, and will inform the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Knowledge of the specific mechanisms that lead to diminished decision making capacity following alcohol exposure and in the presence of peers is important to the design of interventions. To the extent that alcohol and the presence of peers may combine to impact a youth's decision-making capabilities, and these deficits in decision-making affect real world behaviors, successful interventions must be rooted in a combination of individual factors (e.g., decreasing a youth's susceptibility to peer influences) while simultaneously changing the social context. The proposed studies will deploy behavioral and fMRI methods to yield fundamental insights into the independent and interactive effects of social context and alcohol on risk-taking, and will inform the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Two of the strongest influences on young adult risk taking decisions are alcohol use and social context. Yet the principal investigator the known potency of each factor in individually inducing risk-taking among youth, and the principal investigator the frequency with which young people consume alcohol in the presence of their peers, no prior research has sought to examine their concurrent and potentially interactive effects. In our model of decision-making in adolescence and young adulthood, asynchronous maturational changes in the brain's cognitive control and reward processing systems yield a period of increased proclivity for risk, and increased susceptibility to specific influences on decision-making. We hypothesize that alcohol and peer influences have their primary impacts on separate components of the brain's decision-making circuitry, with alcohol-affecting regions most closely linked to cognitive control, and peer influence acting upon the reward processing system. The combination of these individually deleterious influences may thus create a powerful risk-taking cocktail that disrupts processing within normally offsetting components of the brain's decision-making circuitry, and thereby increases the tendency to engage in risk-taking behaviors with potentially serious consequences (e.g. reckless driving, risky sexual activity, crime). The present application includes behavioral studies designed to test the main and interactive effects of acute alcohol consumption and peer influence on young adults' decisions about risk, as well as an fMRI studies designed to test our neurobiological framework for adolescent and young adult decision-making and the associated hypothesis regarding the separate neural loci of alcohol and social influences. In order to conduct these studies, a research team with combined expertise in the cognitive neuroscience of executive function, the psychosocial development of adolescents and young adults, and the influences of alcohol on cognition and affect, has been assembled. The proposed studies will yield fundamental insights into the effects of social context and alcohol on young adults' risk-taking behaviors, and will inform the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Knowledge of the specific mechanisms that lead to diminished decision making capacity following alcohol exposure and in the presence of peers is important to the design of interventions. To the extent that alcohol and the presence of peers may combine to impact a youth's decision-making capabilities, and these deficits in decision-making affect real world behaviors, successful interventions must be rooted in a combination of individual factors (e.g., decreasing a youth's susceptibility to peer influences) while simultaneously changing the social context. The proposed studies will deploy behavioral and fMRI methods to yield fundamental insights into the independent and interactive effects of social context and alcohol on risk-taking, and will inform the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent work in our lab suggests that, during adolescence, asynchronous patterns of development across different brain systems produce a period of increased sensitivity to affective stimuli and diminished capacity for cognitive control. Especially in affectively salient peer contexts, this regulatory imbalance may contribute to adolescents' increased proclivity to engage in risky behaviors (e.g., substance use, unprotected sexual activity, and reckless driving) that significantly threaten their health and well-being. In separate work, we and others have demonstrated the potential to improve adults' cognitive control through targeted working memory (WM) training. In the present proposal, we aim to bridge these two lines of research by using behavioral and neuroimaging methods to test a novel application of WM training to promote adolescents' cognitive control capabilities, and thus reduce risk taking. We hypothesize that adolescents' control over impulsive and automatic behaviors, especially in affectively salient contexts, can be improved through a targeted program of adaptive complex WM training. We further hypothesize that such improved cognitive control will engender trained adolescent participants with enhanced deliberative decision making skills, and hence reduce their proclivity toward risk taking. Using fMRI, we will characterize the mechanisms that underlie these behavioral changes. The PI and co-PI have a recent history of successful collaboration, and combined expertise in the cognitive neuroscience of cognitive control and the psychosocial development of adolescents and young adults. The proposed studies have the potential to greatly inform theoretical models of adolescent behavior, to yield fundamental insights into the processes that affect adolescent decision-making, to determine whether the maturational timetable of cognitive control can be accelerated through training, and to yield a low-cost intervention for reducing adolescent risk behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Excessive risk-taking behavior (substance use, reckless driving, crime, etc.) is the most significant threat to adolescents' health and well-being. Adolescent risk-taking frequently occurs in affectively charged contexts, likely as a result of discordant maturation in the cognitive control and reward processing brain systems that influence decision making. The proposed studies will deploy behavioral and fMRI methodologies to examine the feasibility of using targeted working memory (WM) training to improve brain function in regions associated with cognitive control, and hence increase adolescent' capability to exert self-regulatory control over risky decision making.

This awards provides support for Temple University under the direction of Principal Investigator Jason Chein to purchase a high-performance 3-Tesla (3T) whole-body Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner, required hardware and software. The instrumentation will play a central role in facilitating the establishment of a new,multi-modal, behavioral research imaging center on the Temple University (TU) Main Campus.This scanner will be devoted exclusively to research and research education, serving a large,
multi-disciplinary, community of investigators from Temple and neighboring institutions that presently lack access to state-of-the-art MRI resources. MRI has become an essential tool in behavioral and bio-behavioral science. This tool enables researchers to study, non-invasively, both the structural organization of the brain and the local changes in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal that index brain function. With this information, researchers can infer neural activity with high spatial resolution, characterize volumetric differences in brain tissue, accurately track the organization of connective pathways in the brain, and decipher complex patterns represented in the brain's overall activation profile, thus opening the door to ground-breaking new discoveries pertaining to how humans think, remember, make decisions, and pay attention. It provides insight into how humans process language, space, and action and how these capabilities develop.

The instrument requested in this application, a Siemens MAGNETOM Prisma 3T scanner, will provide industry- leading imaging capabilities, with impressive signal-to-noise ratios, imaging speed, and spatial and temporal resolution. Acquisition of this MRI system will enable local scientists to extend the reach of the research they are engaged in and to develop pioneering new lines of investigation that are not supported by the limited imaging resources currently available. The acquisition of a new 3T MRI system will also enhance graduate and undergraduate education on Temple?s highly diverse, urban campus. The establishment of a main campus MRI research center will also substantially impact efforts to attract top scientists and studentsto the institution.

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar investigating risky behavior in adolescents, using interdisciplinary approaches drawn from neuroscience, cognitive science and developmental psychology. Adolescent risk-taking is a significant threat to public health, and contributes to a variety of adverse outcomes, including drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy and STIs, and violent crime. Two elements are known to contribute significantly to likelihood to engage in risk-taking: first, youth are more likely to take risks in the presence of peers, and second, risk-taking increases when youth are under the influence of alcohol. While alcohol consumption often takes place in a social setting, little research has considered how alcohol use and peer presence interact to influence adolescent decision-making. The present study uses a neurobiological framework to examine how the combination of peer presence and alcohol consumption affects brain responses during risk-taking tasks. Specifically, the project examines how peer presence and alcohol affect connections between brain areas known to be involved in risky decision-making. The project also examines how individual differences in brain responses relate to individual tendency to engage in risk-taking, give in to peer pressure, and abuse drugs and alcohol. Ultimately, the goal of this project is to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms underlying suboptimal decision-making in adolescence, and to identify potential neural or behavioral factors that predispose some youth to greater risk.

Adolescence is a time of considerable brain development, and a significant body of research suggests that two neural systems mature along different trajectories throughout this period. The differing developmental time courses of 1) cognitive control and 2) affective/reward processing are thought to contribute to adolescents' tendency to engage in risk-taking. The neural regions involved in these processes are well-characterized in the literature. However, much less is known about the way these regions interact during development, and how this interaction is affected by contextual factors that impact risk-taking. Previous research has identified two contextual factors that contribute significantly to adolescents? likelihood to engage in risky decision-making: first, adolescents are more likely to take risks in the presence of peers, and second, risk-taking increases when youth are under the influence of alcohol. While alcohol consumption in adolescence often takes place in a social setting, little research has considered how alcohol use and peer presence interact to influence decision-making. The present project addresses the limitations in the current literature by 1) utilizing fMRI analytic techniques that test models of interaction between multiple neural systems and 2) investigating the combined role of peer presence and alcohol intoxication on adolescent decision-making in a single experimental design. This project tests the hypothesis that peer presence and alcohol intoxication significantly diminish connectivity between cognitive control and affective processing regions during decision-making, thereby contributing to increased risk-taking. The project will also examine how neural responses relate to individual tendency to take risks and give in to peer pressure. In the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience, the predominant theories of adolescent decision-making posit a causal relationship between brain activity in multiple neural systems during risk-taking. However, the extant literature has relied on analytic approaches that are not designed to test causal interactions between brain regions. This project utilizes fMRI analytic approaches that test functional and effective connectivity between regions (Psychophysiological Interaction and Dynamic Causal Modeling), in order to directly investigate the way these regions interact and the direction of effects. Furthermore, this project will shed light on the combined role of peers and alcohol during risky decision-making, leading to a more sophisticated understanding of the way biological and sociocultural factors interact to produce outcomes in adolescence. The project and postdoctoral training require an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing analytic techniques from cognitive neuroscience, theories from developmental psychology, and experimental methods drawn from both clinical psychology and functional neuroimaging.

PROJECT SUMMARY With widespread public concern about the increasing presence of smartphone and social media (SSM) technologies in the lives of American youth,1?3 there is a conspicuous need for investment in rigorous scientific work that will inform our understanding of the psychological precursors of SSM habits, and on the impacts that these habits may have on subsequent development and everyday functioning. While a foundational literature is starting to form, research on the origins and outcomes of SSM habits remains skeletal, and two basic questions are still unanswered: 1) Are the correlates of digital media habits stable across development, or do they vary with age? 2) In what direction do these relationships ensue ? do observed correlations reflect individual differences that presage subsequent variation in SSM habit formation/intensity, or, do they reflect the impacts of SSM habits on consequent brain/psychological development and everyday functioning? The present study aims to refine our answers to these key questions through a multi-methodological (behavior, neuroimaging, self-reports, ecological momentary assessment) cross-sequential investigation of the individual differences factors that prospectively predict SSM habit formation and of the outcomes associated with intensification of such habits across development. Through an initial cross-sectional assay of children, adolescents, and young adults, we will investigate whether the relations between psychological/brain functioning and SSM behaviors vary as a function of age. In a subsequent longitudinal phase, we will concurrently track trajectories of psychological/brain maturation, everyday functioning (e.g., academic outcomes, psychological and physical wellbeing), and SSM engagement, in order to shed light on the temporal chain of processes linking mental functioning and SSM usage. Our investigative team is extremely well positioned to execute the proposed research, which will draw heavily from the theoretical framing and methods that have propelled our previous work, and which will recruit from active developmental cohorts who have participated in related recent studies implemented in our labs. Based on guiding neurodevelopmental theories, we hypothesize that individual differences in self-regulatory control, reward and sensation seeking, reactivity to social inputs, and risk-taking propensity will be differentially predictive of usage patterns at varying points in development, and that these relationships will be shown to have bidirectional interactions with intensifying SSM behaviors, with important implications for everyday functioning.