A scientific area that has received less attention is determining how cognitive control and motivational systems interact over the course of development. As mentioned earlier, Ernst and colleagues 35, 36 showed that promise of a monetary reward facilitated adolescent cognitive control behavior more than for adults. Geier et al. 17 recently identified the neural substrates of this cognitive up-regulation using a variant of an antisaccade task during functional brain imaging. In adolescents and adults, trials for which money was at stake speeded performance and facilitated accuracy, but this effect was larger in adolescents. Following a cue that the next trial would be rewarded, adolescents showed exaggerated activation in the ventral striatum while preparing for and subsequently executing the antisaccade. An exaggerated response was observed in adolescents within prefrontal regions along the precentral sulcus, important for controlling eye movements, suggesting a reward-related up-regulation in control regions as well.
