Friendship stability in adolescence is associated with ventral striatum responses to vicarious rewards

An important task for adolescents is to form and maintain friendships. In this three-wave biannual study, we used a longitudinal neuroscience perspective to examine the dynamics of friendship stability. Relative to childhood and adulthood, adolescence is marked by elevated ventral striatum activity...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2021-01, Vol.12 (1), p.313-313, Article 313
Main Authors: Schreuders, Elisabeth, Braams, Barbara R., Crone, Eveline A., Güroğlu, Berna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
59/57
631/378/2645
706/689/477/2811
Adolescence
Adolescent
Adolescents
Adult
Age
Age Factors
Child
Child development
Children
Dynamic stability
Female
Friends
Friendship
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
multidisciplinary
Neostriatum
Nervous system
Nucleus Accumbens - physiology
Pleasure
Regression Analysis
Reinforcement
Reward
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Task Performance and Analysis
Ventral Striatum - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:An important task for adolescents is to form and maintain friendships. In this three-wave biannual study, we used a longitudinal neuroscience perspective to examine the dynamics of friendship stability. Relative to childhood and adulthood, adolescence is marked by elevated ventral striatum activity when gaining self-serving rewards. Using a sample of participants between the ages of eight and twenty-eight, we tested age-related changes in ventral striatum response to gaining for stable ( n  = 48) versus unstable best friends ( n  = 75) (and self). In participants with stable friendships, we observed a quadratic developmental trajectory of ventral striatum responses to winning versus losing rewards for friends, whereas participants with unstable best friends showed no age-related changes. Ventral striatum activity in response to winning versus losing for friends further varied with friendship closeness for participants with unstable friendships. We suggest that these findings may reflect changing social motivations related to formation and maintenance of friendships across adolescence. A reward-related ventral striatum response is observed when rewards are gained for friends. Here the authors examine how this response changes from childhood to young adulthood, and show that friendship stability in adolescence is associated with ventral striatum responses to vicarious rewards.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-20042-1