Differences in risk appraisal and neural activity in adolescents with a history of misconduct

While much of the prior work examining the behavioural and neural mechanisms of adolescent risk taking has focused on community samples, less is known about whether these mechanisms apply to adolescents engaging in high levels of risky behaviour. The current study examines behavioural and neural differences between adolescents with (N = 24) and without (N = 35) a history of misconduct using a risk perception questionnaire and risk-taking fMRI task. Adolescents with a history of misconduct perceived fewer negative consequences of risk relative to positive consequences and exhibited altered neural tracking of risk and reward in the nucleus accumbens. Specifically, adolescents with a history of misconduct displayed relatively diminished increases in nucleus accumbens tracking of increasing risk level, potentially suggesting habituation to increasing risk level, and exhibited hypersensitivity to small rewards. These findings suggest that adolescents with a history of misconduct process risk and reward differently, which may underlie their increased risky behaviour.