Credit: Virginia Tech
Pearl Chiu and Brooks King-Casas, both Virginia Tech associate professors at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, combined brain scans and computational modeling to understand how social influence swayed decision-making in teenagers. In particular, they examined neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and found a notable difference between in how the substance-naïve and substance-exposed groups responded to safe and risky peer influences. Teens who had not used illicit substances showed significantly more activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, particularly when they viewed their peers’ safe choices, which indicates a greater social reward signal.