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Poster Session B: Wednesday, August 13, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

Neural Mechanisms of Adolescent Social Decision-Making: Insights from Computational Modeling

Jiamiao Yang¹, Judit Campdepadrós Barrios², Francisca Ayres Ribeiro, Anna van Duijvenvoorde, Eveline Crone, Suzanne van de Groep, Christian Keysers, Valeria Gazzola; ¹University of Amsterdam, ²Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Presenter: Jiamiao Yang

Adolescents often prefer immediate rewards for themselves over delayed rewards for others, but the underlying motivations: impulsivity or selfishness remain unclear. We applied a novel computational model to disentangle these factors by independently estimating discounting rates for self and other and the relative weight of others’ rewards. Using behavioral and fMRI data from 88 adolescents, we found that participants discounted delayed rewards more steeply for others and prioritized self-rewards. Age was associated with reduced impulsivity for others but not for self. fMRI results revealed that value-based decisions involving self and other recruited the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ), while decision difficulty engaged the cingulate cortex, insula, and amygdala. These findings highlight age-related improvements in social decision-making and suggest distinct neural mechanisms for evaluating rewards for self vs. others during adolescence.

Topic Area: Reward, Value & Social Decision Making

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF