CAREER: Neurocognitive development of adolescent learning

Adolescence is an important developmental period marked by increases in independence, changes in motivations, and new experiences. As adolescents engage in new behaviors, they may experience good or bad outcomes, learn from the experience, and use what is learned when faced with a new situation. The goal of this project is to understand the cognitive and brain mechanisms related to learning from experience, and how these change from childhood to adolescence and then to young adulthood.

The project tests a relatively novel characterization of adolescence as a time when learning from experience is heavily weighted both at behavioral and brain level. In addition to the scientific work, the project includes STEM outreach in K-12 schools and internships for high school students.

In more detail, learning from experience has been broadly described as motivated learning. Motivated learning is critical for behaving adaptively, but little is known about the neurocognitive development of motivated learning. The project uses behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging approaches to investigate age-related changes in learning and integration of different types of learning.

In particular, the project focuses on striatal and medial-temporal learning systems in the brain, and how these change across development. Notably, the project also uses a novel brain imaging technique to make inferences about dopamine to better understand its role in learning over the course of development. The results of the proposed work have the potential to better understand critical changes in the adolescent brain, focusing not just on vulnerabilities but also on adaptive opportunities and strengths related to learning.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.