Risk taking, decision-making, and brain volume in youth adopted internationally from institutional care

Publication date: Available online 28 August 2018Source: NeuropsychologiaAuthor(s): Max P. Herzberg, Amanda S. Hodel, Raquel A. Cowell, Ruskin H. Hunt, Megan R. Gunnar, Kathleen M. ThomasAbstractEarly life stress in the form of early institutional care has been shown to have wide-ranging impacts on the biological and behavioral development of young children. Studies of brain structure using magnetic resonance imaging have reported decreased prefrontal volumes, and a large literature has detailed decreased executive function (EF) in post-institutionalized (PI) youth. Little is known about how these findings relate to decision-making, particularly in PI youth entering adolescence—a period often characterized by social transition and increased reliance upon EF skills and the still-maturing prefrontal regions that support them. As decision-making in risky situations can be an especially important milestone in early adolescence, a clearer knowledge of the relationship between risky decision making and prefrontal structures in post-institutionalized youth is needed. The youth version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and a two-deck variant of the Iowa Gambling Task were used to assess risky decision-making in post-institutionalized youth and a community control group (N = 74, PI = 44, Non-adopted = 30; mean age = 12.93). Participants also completed a structural MRI scan for the assessment of group differences in brain structure. We hypothesized that participants adopted from inst...
Source: Neuropsychologia - Category: Neurology Source Type: research