A recent study by Geier et al. (2009) illustrates how adolescents may have distinct activation profiles during different stages of the task. These authors cleverly designed the task precisely to be able to deconvolve the distinct stages of the task. During the cue component, adolescents showed an attenuated response in the ventral striatum compared to adults. However, during reward anticipation, the same adolescents showed heightened activity in the same region, as compared to adults. Collectively, these data suggest that temporally distinct aspects of reward tasks may yield significantly different results and should be carefully considered when making sweeping generalizations about the adolescent striatum and reward sensitivity.
