A recent study has described how the social brain develops during adolescence.10 Adolescence is a time characterized by change – hormonally, physically, psychologically, and socially. Functional MRI studies have demonstrated the developmental changes that occur during adolescence among white matter and grey matter volumes in regions within the “social brain.”1,7,12 Activity in the mesolimbic brain regions also showed changes between adolescence and adulthood during social cognition tasks. A developmental clock – along with the signals that provide information on somatic growth, energy balance, and season of the year – times the awakening of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons at the onset of puberty. High-frequency GnRH release results in the disinhibition and activation of GnRH neurons at the onset of puberty, leading to gametogenesis and an increase in sex hormone secretion. Sex hormones and adrenocorticotropic hormones both remodel and activate neurocircuits during adolescent brain development, leading to the development of sexual salience of sensory stimuli, sexual motivation, and expression of copulatory behavior. These influences of hormones on reproductive behavior depend on changes in the adolescent brain that occur independently of gonadal maturation.
