Age-related differences in hippocampal network engagement during safety processing in adolescents

Adolescence is a period characterized by exploration, altered risk-taking, and increased vulnerability to mental health disorders. These phenomena may reflect underlying challenges in safety evaluation. Successfully navigating adolescence may therefore be related to the maturation of neural circuits that support safety evaluation, yet how these mechanisms function during development remains unclear. Using 7-Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging, we recorded neural response in 33 adolescents (M_Age = 14.88 years, 19 females) during evaluation of threat (external cues that signal potential danger) and protection (resources available to an agent that increase safety). Our findings reveal age-related differences in neural recruitment during accurate estimation of protection, such that younger adolescents (12-14 years) exhibited greater hippocampal engagement, whereas older adolescents (15-17 years) exhibited a more integrated circuit involving the hippocampus and anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Our results also provide insight into how competition between threat and protection is resolved within the visual cortex during adolescent safety evaluation, demonstrating enhanced perceptual sensitivity to protection signals compared to threat. Behavioral analysis across a broader developmental spectrum (N = 63, M_Age = 24.18 years, range 12-40 years, 34 females, including adults from prior work) revealed a quadratic association between age and protection estimation accuracy, with lower accuracy in mid-to-late adolescence relative to early adolescence and adulthood. Together, our behavioral and neural results indicate adolescence is an important developmental period for safety processing, particularly with respect to accurately estimating safety.