The neural and behavioural development of response inhibition is protracted throughout adolescence (e.g., Braet et al., 2009; Rubia et al., 2006; Velanova et al., 2009). Response inhibition is generally measured with go/no-go tasks. In a recent fMRI study, subjects ages 6 to 29 years carried out an go/no-go task with emotional (happy faces) and neutral cues (calm faces) (Somerville, Hare, & Casey, 2011). The ability to resist the neutral no-go stimuli improved with age, and was associated with the development of increased PFC activity. In contrast, adolescents (relative to children and adults) showed lower ability to resist emotional no-go stimuli, which was associated with increased ventral striatum (VS) activity. Consistent with an evolving theory of adolescent risk-taking, across go/no-go and other response inhibition tasks, adolescents tend to show a pattern of greater activity in the VS in response to emotional or rewarding cues at the same time as an intermediate level of PFC activity (see Blakemore & Robbins, 2012; Crone & Dahl, 2012 for review).
