enhanced ventral striatal activation in adolescents relative to adults and children during reward outcome [65, 66]. During comparable performance of a monetary, two-choice decision-making task with varying levels of risk and rewards, enhanced activation was shown in adults aged 20–40 relative to adolescents aged 9–17 years in a priori selected regions of interest in dorsal ACC and OFC, which, furthermore correlated with less risk-friendly performance, while children activated more ventral ACC [67]. One study, however, found greater activation of the dorsal ACC and no differences in vmOFC and DLPFC activation in children (9–12 years) compared to adults (18–26 years) for high-risk relative to low-risk choices and greater recruitment of lateral OFC in children for negative feedback in a relatively simple choice selection task based on outcome probability [68]. Given that performance was only marginally different, the enhanced dorsal ACC activation in younger subjects was interpreted as greater effort for conflict inhibition in children and the enhanced lateral OFC activation as increased sensitivity to negative feedback.
