Neural representations of the value of helping the family during adolescence

Supporting one's family is an important value for many adolescents across diverse cultural backgrounds. As a developmental period characterized by increased value-based decision-making and ongoing changes in the developing brain, adolescence presents a valuable opportunity to investigate the neural representations of this value. The present study examined the association between adolescents' sense of obligation to the family and functional connectivity between neural systems involved in motivation and reward, social cognition, and cognitive control when making decisions about whether to provide financial support to the family at a cost to themselves. Participants included 266 adolescents (ages 9-15 and 19-20) who completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) decision-making task in which they had the opportunity to give money to caregivers, friends, and strangers. Family obligation values consistently predicted negative functional connectivity between the ventral striatum (VS) and networks associated with social cognition and cognitive control during decisions to give to the family among older adolescents, but this association was connectivity-dependent (reduced and sometimes positive) among younger youth. As such, regions previously implicated in mentalizing and cognitive control may modulate the relative weight placed on family obligation values during value-based functional coupling in the VS. These findings reflect the importance of corticostriatal connectivity in integrating the relative value of helping the family in promoting prosocial behavior during adolescent development.