Virtual: Brain meeting: Dr Andrea Reiter

Brain meeting 

Abstract: Adolescence is a period of life characterised by a shift in social orientation away from the parents, towards one’s peer group.Animal and human studies suggest that social interactions, particularly if they involve peers, are more salient for adolescents than for adults, with implications for both adaptive and maladaptive development.

I will present cross-sectional as well as longitudinal human data from the Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network, focussing on the development of different social decision-making domains. In the first part of the talk, I will show evidence that susceptibility to peer influence decreases throughout adolescence, and that this can be explained by teenagers becoming more certain about what they like. In the second part of the talk, I will present findings that suggest that trust increases from adolescence to young adulthood, and that this is accounted for by decreasing social risk aversion. I will also relate the development of social decision-making to structural brain development, real-life peer relations and early social adversity.