Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by increased reward-seeking behavior. This anecdotal and empirical observation has motivated the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience to identify the neural substrates of this phenomenon. As extensive animal and human work has identified the dopamine-rich striatum as the seat of reward sensitivity in the brain (e.g., Schultz, 1998; Montague et al., 2004), this region has been the focus of intense study in the adolescent reward literature and is the focus of this review. Findings on other regions (e.g., the orbitofrontal cortex) that also receive rich dopamine innervation and that are implicated in reward sensitivity are not discussed here. While studies to date agree that the striatum is the neural region most responsive to reward across development, from children to adults, the relative engagement of this neural system during adolescence is a topic of debate. In this review, I begin by briefly reviewing insights from the animal literature regarding reward-related striatal development. A subsequent section reviews developmental neuroimaging findings and outlines plausible explanations and speculations for the discrepancies across studies. Finally, I conclude with caveats and future directions of this captivating area of research.
