Ashley Kim
Pronouns: She/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Meghan Martz
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychiatry / Medicine
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Session 3 – 1:40pm – 2:30 pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Ashley Kim, Meghan Martz
Presenter: 82
Abstract
Background: Adolescence is a developmental period of changes occurring in both the body and the brain, when reward-driven behaviors are typically most likely to occur. In the NeuroMod Lab, we examined the associations between reward-related inhibitory control and the extent to which participants can modulate reward-related brain activity through real-time fMRI neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf) and investigated if there are developmental differences in this association between adolescents and young adults. We hypothesized that across the neurocognitive and neuroimaging measures, the young adult group will display a greater extent of reward-related self-control than the adolescent group. Methods: 58 participants (n=36 adolescents, n=22 young adults), completed an emotional go/no-go task with two emotional-salience conditions, where happy faces are go and neutral faces are no-go, and vice versa. Participants also completed a rtfMRI-nf session to measure their ability to increase and decrease nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activity while receiving neurofeedback. False alarm rate (responding to the no-go condition) from the emotional go/no-go task and extracted beta weights from NAcc activations during the rtfMRI-nf task were analyzed using SPSS statistical software (v27) Results: Compared to young adults, adolescents had a significantly greater false alarm rate under both happy and neutral face go conditions (adol. group x¯ = 21.58, p < 0.01 ; young adult group x¯ = 11.54, p < 0.01 for happy go; adol. group x¯ = 30.56, p < 0.01; young adult group x¯ = 16.61, p < 0.01 for neutral go). Results from linear regression analyses showed that being in the young adult group (happy go model: ß=0.42, p=0.01; neutral go model: ß=0.45, p=0.007) and having a higher false alarm rate for both conditions of the emotional go/no-go task (happy go model: ß=0.56, p=0.001; neutral go model: ß=0.59, p=0.001) were associated with significantly greater percent signal change in the NAcc during increase trials while receiving neurofeedback. There were no significant predictors during decrease trials. Conclusions: Using both neurocognitive and neuroimaging measures, findings show that young adults have more efficient reward-related self-control than adolescents. This work highlights the potential of rtfMRI-nf to dynamically measure developmental differences in self-control. Presentation link
Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary
