Commentary: Neural correlates of expected risks and returns in risky choice across development

“Wisdom comes with age” is an oft-heard expression. It suggests that across development we improve in our ability to make decisions—but evidence for its validity is equivocal. In real-world decision-making, there is an adolescent-specific increased propensity to engage in behaviors associated with morbidity and mortality (e.g., road traffic accidents, unprotected sex, violence, drug, and alcohol abuse; Blum and Nelson-Mmari, 2004). However, this inverted u-shape developmental trajectory for risk-taking is typically not observed in laboratory-based studies (Defoe et al., 2015). As such, there exists a need to: (a) bridge the gap between laboratory and real world behavior; and (b) clarify the processes underlying developmental differences in decision-making to inform interventions that target a reduction in health-risking adolescent activities.