Although the work presented thus far suggests that adolescence is a heightened period of reward sensitivity, not all adolescents are reward-seekers. The importance of examining individual differences in behavior and neural activity has been appreciated in adult samples (e.g., Tom et al., 2007) but less work has been conducted in developmental populations. Reward-seeking and risk-taking behaviors (e.g., gambling and illicit drug use) are more frequent in individuals with a particular behavioral trait, such as elevated novelty and sensation-seeking (Willis et al., 1994). Relevant to this review is that anticipatory activation of the ventral striatum predicts reward-related risks at an individual differences level (Montague and Berns, 2002; Matthews et al., 2004; Kuhnen and Knutson, 2005). For instance, individuals who show greater activation in the ventral striatum prior to a gambling choice are more likely to make a risky, rather than safe, choice (Kuhnen and Knutson, 2005). More generally, previous studies have documented striking individual differences in the efficiency of cognitive control (Fan et al., 2002), which is necessary for self-regulation in rewarding situations. In fact, the ability to direct attention away
