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Risk taking, decision-making, and brain volume in youth adopted internationally from institutional care
Max P Herzberg1, Amanda S Hodel1, Raquel A Cowell2
1Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
Neuropsychologia
|September 1, 2018
Summary
Early institutional care impacts brain development and decision-making. Longer institutional stays in youth correlate with poorer risky decision-making and smaller prefrontal brain volumes.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychiatry
Background:
- Early life stress, particularly institutional care, profoundly affects child development.
- Post-institutionalized (PI) youth exhibit altered brain structure, notably reduced prefrontal volumes, and impaired executive function (EF).
- The relationship between these neurological changes and decision-making, especially risky choices during adolescence, remains underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between duration of early institutional care and risky decision-making in post-institutionalized youth.
- To examine structural brain differences, specifically prefrontal volumes, in relation to institutional care duration and decision-making performance.
- To understand how early institutional experiences influence adolescent risk-taking behaviors and their neural underpinnings.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and Iowa Gambling Task to assess risky decision-making in post-institutionalized youth and a control group.
- Employed structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare brain structures, focusing on prefrontal volumes.
- Recruited 74 participants (44 post-institutionalized, 30 non-adopted controls) with a mean age of 12.93 years.
Main Results:
- Later-adopted participants, those with longer institutional stays, demonstrated significantly fewer risky decisions compared to shorter-stay or non-adopted individuals.
- Structural MRI revealed decreased prefrontal volumes in later-adopted youth.
- The reduction in prefrontal volumes was significantly correlated with poorer performance on risky decision-making tasks.
Conclusions:
- The duration of early institutional care is linked to alterations in both risky decision-making behavior and prefrontal brain structure in youth.
- Findings highlight the lasting impact of institutional deprivation on adolescent neurodevelopment and behavior.
- This research underscores the need for targeted interventions for institutionalized youth to mitigate long-term cognitive and behavioral consequences.
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