Social Motivation and Hippocampal-Cortical Structural Development in Adolescent Girls

Abstract

Adolescence is a fundamental developmental period marked by dramatic socio-affective and physiological changes, including shifts in social behavior and maturation of underlying brain architecture. In girls, this period coincides with the onset of the pubertal transition, which fundamentally influences motivated social behavior and neurodevelopment. The present study examines age- and pubertal maturation-related changes in social motivational goals and hippocampal and motivation-related cortical structural development in adolescent girls (n=154) across five timepoints. Social motivational goals showed substantial variability of each subdomain across age and pubertal development. Specifically, all social goals showed linear increases across age and pubertal stage, whereas goals centered around developing social competency increased non-linearly across age. Our neurodevelopmental findings align with established research, revealing volumetric increases of the hippocampus, and cortical thinning of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) across age and pubertal stages. Collectively, these results highlight simultaneous change in endorsement and prioritization of different social motivational goals across adolescence, and they underscore the simultaneous shifts in structural development in regions supporting social motivation and broader socio-affective development. This research highlights the importance of fostering positive social experiences during this critical developmental stage, with implications for adolescent well-being and social development.