A Developmental Social Neuroscience Model for Understanding Pathways to Substance Use Disorders During Adolescence

Adolescence is a transitional period of development characterized by critical changes in physical, neural, cognitive, affective, and social functions. Studies investigating the underlying mechanisms of substance use at levels of self-report, brain response, and behavioral data are generally consistent with suggestions from dual-process model that differential growth rates of frontally mediated control and striato-frontal reward processing are related to a heightened risk of substance use during adolescence. However, social theories highlight the important role of social context and environment in which adolescents grow up and suggest that growing up in an unfavorable environment and in particular exposure to adverse childhood experiences play a huge role in how this vulnerability is translated into actual risk. In this review, we provide a summary of recent theories that examine a number of key individual and social and environmental risk factors underlying risk for early initiation and escalation of substance misuse. We also present a model that expands the dual-process model to incorporate the role of negative self-concept and negative affect associated with growing up in an unfavorable environment and their interactions with cognitive control and inhibition to further explain vulnerability to early initiation and development of substance misuse in adolescents.