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Relating behavioral control and brain development : insights from adolescence / by Heidi Catherine Meyer

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Author	Meyer, Heidi Catherine
Title	Relating behavioral control and brain development : insights from adolescence / by Heidi Catherine Meyer
Date	2016
Abstract	Across mammalian species, adolescence is characterized by a unique combination of cognitive, behavioral and neurobiological changes. Behavioral tendencies observed during this period promote a variety of flexible interactions with the surrounding environment, which are essential for establishing independence. However, to attain maturity, behavior must be refined to facilitate efficient and adaptive response patterns that are specifically tuned to salient details of an environment. This process depends in large part on identifying and learning the meaning of cues that indicate that a behavior is appropriate, or alternatively, that it should be altered or inhibited. As such, disruptions to inhibitory control may reflect problems in learning to activate and maintain information about which actions are most appropriate in a given context. The research presented in this dissertation aimed to elucidate the specific circumstances under which adolescents experience difficulty with inhibitory control and test the hypothesis that the extent to which adolescents exhibit inhibitory control is inherently linked to preparatory processes. To this end, learning-theory based behavioral paradigms and state-of-the art neurobiological methods were utilized to determine the behavioral and neurobiological factors that contribute to inhibitory control learning during adolescence. The overarching conclusion of this research is that inhibitory control failures during adolescence are associated with (1) difficulties navigating ambiguity in the environment and (2) preferentially generating a response pattern based on isolated cues rather than the environment as a whole. Consequently, information important for disambiguating features of the environment is ineffectively encoded during adolescence, and in many cases fails to appropriately activate brain circuits involved in motoric stopping. Notably, these difficulties manifest specifically during the adolescent period and are not observed in juvenile or adult rats. This work also supports the idea that prefrontal and subcortical regions likely work in concert across the lifespan to facilitate learning of adaptive behaviors including inhibition. Specifically, the present research found that chemogenetically modulating activity in orbitofrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens, but not prelimbic cortex, disrupts inhibitory control processes in adult rats. Importantly, this work parallels leading theories that attribute inhibitory control difficulties during adolescence to imbalanced activity in prefrontal control regions relative to subcortical reward processing regions.
Description	1 online resource (xiii, 216 leaves) : illustrations (some color)
Format	application/pdf
College	Dartmouth College -- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Issuing Body	Dartmouth Dissertations are made available through the Dartmouth Digital Library.
Degree	Thesis (Ph.D)--Dartmouth College.
Copyright	Made available by the author under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.; Made available by the Trustees of Dartmouth College under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1349/ddlp.2173

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