Neural correlates of social influence on risk taking and substance use in adolescents

Purpose of Review. Adolescents often engage in elevated levels of risk taking that gives rise to substance use. Family and peers constitute the primary contextual risk factors for adolescent substance use. This report reviews how families and peers influence adolescent neurocognitive development to inform their risk taking and subsequent substance use. Recent Findings. Developmental neuroscience using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has identified regions of the brain involved in social cognition, cognitive control, and reward processing that are integrally linked to social influence on adolescent risk taking. These neural mechanisms play a role in how peer and family influence (e.g., physical presence, relationship quality, rejection) translates into adolescent substance use. Summary. Peers and families can independently, and in tandem, contribute to adolescent substance use, for better or for worse. We propose that future work utilize fMRI to investigate the neural mech