Adolescents’ proclivity toward risk-taking behavior and susceptibility to poor decision-making may be related to unique neural characteristics that increase their sensitivity to rewarding outcomes. Two primary theories of reward processing in adolescence have received support, each purporting different functional trends in the striatum. One posits that hypoactivation of the striatal system leads adolescents to engage in reward seeking as a compensatory response. The other suggests that the striatum behaves in a contrasting manner; that its hyperactivity leads to greater reward-seeking behavior. Recent fMRI evidence lends support to the latter hypothesis and is reviewed in detail elsewhere (Galvan 2010). Briefly, greater ventral striatal activation has been shown in adolescents compared to children and adults in anticipation of reward (Geier et al. 2010; Galvan et al. 2006) and during reward receipt (Van Leijenhorst et al. 2010). During reward processing, BOLD signal showed attenuations in the ventral striatum when adolescents were required to assess an incentive cue, but showed elevations during reward anticipation (Geier et al. 2010), suggesting that adolescents may have limited capacity to assess potential reward outcomes and have exaggerated reactivity
