Research

OVERVIEW

The Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group focuses on neurocognitive and social development in typically developing adolescents, as well as its relationship to mental health-related symptoms. We are particularly interested in the development of social cognition and decision-making during adolescence. Understanding how the brain and behaviour change during adolescence is of particular importance given that 75% of mental illnesses first appear before age 24, with half of all lifetime cases first appearing by age 14 (Kessler et al., 2012). In addition, we are also interested in understanding how certain social and environmental factors might be related to differences in the relationship between brain, cognition and behaviour during this period.

The Social Brain

Humans are inherently social. A large proportion of the human brain is involved in social interaction and understanding other people. The social brain is defined as the complex network of areas that enable us to recognise others and evaluate their mental states (intentions, desires, beliefs), feelings and actions. Over the past two decades, research has shed light on how the brain enables the diverse set of functions that allow humans to understand and interact with each other. Several brain areas are involved in social cognitive processes (see Figure below).

Social brain development during adolescence

Areas within the social brain network continue to develop throughout adolescence, demonstrating some of the most protracted neural development in humans. In a longitudinal study of 288 individuals, Mills et al. (2014) examined the structural changes associated with mentalising; that is, the ability to infer the intentions of others. Grey matter volume and cortical thickness in the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction and posterior superior temporal sulcus decreased from childhood into the early twenties. The anterior temporal complex increased in grey matter volume until adolescence and in cortical thickness until early adulthood. Surface area for each region followed a cubic trajectory, peaking in early or pre-adolescence before decreasing into the early twenties.

SOCIAL COGNITION

Studies have shown that social cognitive abilities, such as taking the perspective of others and inferring other people's mental states, improves during adolescence (Dumontheil et al. 2010). In our lab, we are particularly interested in how young people might use social cognitive abilities to inform their own decisions and learning processes.

Peer influence during adolescence

Adolescence is a developmental period associated with heightened risk-taking behaviour, such as alcohol, drug and tobacco use, and dangerous driving (Eaton et al., 2012; Steinberg, 2008). However, the social context greatly influences such decision making throughout adolescence: young adolescents' perceptions of risk were more strongly influenced by other teenagers than by adults, whereas this was not the case for any other age group (Knoll et al., 2015; 2017).

Peer influence is largely associated with negative outcomes, but other studies from our group found that adolescents were socially influenced to change their prosocial behaviour (Foulkes et al., 2017; Ahmed et al., 2020), even when prosocial behaviour is costly (Chierchia et al., 2020). This provides evidence that younger people’s heightened susceptibility to social influence can also result in positive behaviours.

Influence from peers might also be relevant in other decisions, for example, adhering to social distancing rules (Bignardi et al., 2025). In addition, peer influence could be particularly influential for other health behaviours, such as diet and food choices during adolescence, when young people might start having more meals outside of their homes and in the company of their friends and peers.

Peer learning during adolescence

People spend a great deal of their time learning from and with other people, mostly socially, from teachers, friends and family (De Felice et al., 2022). Yet, we do not know much about the role that social cognition plays in learning. In our lab, we are particularly interested in adolescent social learning from peers, given the importance of friend and peer relationships during this period.

EMOTIONAL PROCESSES

Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation is the ability to recruit processes to influence how we feel about a situation (Ahmed, 2015). The ability to recruit these processes is being increasingly recognised as an important component of positive mental health. Brain regions associated with the generation and regulation of emotions undergo protracted structural and functional development during adolescence. Difficulties in emotion regulation during adolescence are related to socioemotional difficulties such as depressive and anxiety-related symptoms.

Difficulties in emotion regulation

We are interested in understanding what factors could be related to increased difficulties in emotion regulation. For example, pubertal development is related to changes in neural sensitivity to socioemotional information, as well as to other biological changes, which might change how young people think about themselves or are treated by other people. In a study, we find that pubertal development in girls is related to increased difficulties with emotion regulation, such as having repetitive negative thoughts, or ruminating, and depressive symptoms (Ahmed et al., 2023). Importantly, these difficulties were related to higher negative self-schemas, that is, girls in more advanced stages of puberty made and remembered more negative judgments about themselves. Negative self-schemas peak during adolescence, and are related to other difficulties related to self-conscious emotion and embarrassment (Moses-Payne et al., 2023).

MYRIAD: mindfulness in adolescence

In addition, we are interested in understanding how young people learn to regulate their emotions and whether we can improve emotion regulation through online training

The MYRIAD (MY Resilience In ADolescence) project is a Wellcome-funded Strategic Award that aims to investigate whether mindfulness training in schools has the potential to improve wellbeing and mental health in young people. Mindfulness is a way of being present to experiences as they happen, rather than worrying about what has happened or what might happen in the future.

The MYRIAD project compared the effects of a mindfulness programme and an existing social and emotional learning programme to assess whether these programmes could change young people's resilience, cognitive control and decision making processes.

We found that both socioemotional learning programmes reduced antisocial influence after the interventions (Leung et al., 2023) and that there were gender differences in antisocial and prosocial behaviour, which were further related to pubertal development (Ahmed et al., 2022).

More information about the MYRIAD project and the results related to emotion regulation and mental health can be found here.

Mental health difficulties and other related outcomes

According to UNICEF in 2019, up to 20% of adolescents globally experience mental health disorders, which are among the leading causes of disability and death for adolescents aged 10–19 (Carvajal-Velez et al. 2023). Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and anxiety disorders are the most prevalent class of mental disorders. This is particularly problematic among adolescents given the risk for greater depression and anxiety chronicity across the lifespan. In addition, loneliness and social isolation are increasing in societies around the world, and are especially high among 16 to 24-year-old individuals.

In our lab, we are interested in how social environments can be important for the development of mental health difficulties and other related outcomes.

SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

Social Isolation

We are interested in the relationship between social isolation, loneliness and different cognitive and emotional outcomes. In a recent study, we found that social isolation was associated with faster decisions to exert effort for rewards and higher reward learning, especially from social feedback (Tomova et al., under review). Social isolation also led to increased threat learning, a mechanism underlying the emergence, maintenance and treatment of anxiety (Towner et al., 2024).

Social Connection

As belonging becomes particularly important during adolescence (Tomova et al., 2020), good quality friendships during adolescence have been related to psychosocial adaptation later in life (van Harmelen et al., 2020) as well as reduced risk of mental health-related problems (van Harmelen et al., 2017). In addition, we find that friendship quality during adolescence is related to how young people make judgements about themselves, such that young people with more friendship quality view themselves more positively and less negatively (Piera Pi-Sunyer et al., 2024).

WIDER LIVING ENIRONMENTS

The changes that occur during adolescence are not the same for all adolescents. For example, experiences of socioeconomic stress have been related to worse socioemotional and educational outcomes across the lifetime, and these experiences might be important during adolescence. Our studies show that young people who perceive themselves as poorer than their friends experience more difficulties with mental health and behavioural problems (Piera Pi-Sunyer et al., 2023). In addition, we also find that a significant proportion of young people report experiencing food insecurity and that this experience is related to worse wellbeing (Bignardi et al., under review).

DoBAt: Digital delivery of Behavioural Activation to overcome depression and facilitate social and economic transitions of adolescents in low to middle income countries

Mental health problems and their impact of wellbeing could have a greater impact on adolescents in low- and middle-income countries due to the additional adversities they face and the lack of available, effective treatments.

This three year project will use smartphones to deliver a digital intervention for adolescents, supported by local lay counsellors, to reduce depression and facilitate successful transitions to adulthood. We will adapt a tailored psychological therapy, Behavioural Activation (BA), among adolescents (15 to 19 years old) living in rural South Africa and Uganda. We will test the effectiveness of delivery of BA for reducing depression (primary outcome), and possible mechanisms, principally executive function and social cognition. As secondary outcomes, we will assess risk-taking behaviours and a range of human capital outcomes. Further, the proposed work will produce relevant measures of executive functions and social cognition through language translation and cultural adaptation and evaluate their reliability and validity in a rural context.

The team comprises a multidisciplinary group of psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists and economists from South Africa (University of the Witwatersrand), Uganda (BRAC), as well as from the UK (University of Oxford, University of Exeter, University College London) and the USA (University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA).

Read more about the DoBAt project in the Agincourt website and in the University of Oxford Child & Adolescent Psychiatry department research page

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