Geier and colleagues[37] identified the neural substrates of this cognitive upregulation using a variant of this antisaccade task during functional brain imaging. In adolescents and adults, trials for which money was at stake speeded performance and facilitated accuracy, but this effect was larger in adolescents. Following a cue that the next trial would be rewarded, adolescents showed exaggerated activation in the ventral striatum while preparing for and subsequently executing the antisaccade (Figure 3). An exaggerated response was observed in adolescents within prefrontal regions important for controlling eye movements, suggesting a reward-related upregulation in control regions as well. Together, these studies suggest incentive modulation of frontostriatal circuits at the level of the striatum and are consistent with our proposed neurobiological model of striatal and prefrontal interactions across development.
