Early caregiving adversity is associated with increased risk for social difficulties. The ventral striatum and associated corticostriatal circuitry, which have demonstrated vulnerability to early exposures to adversity, are implicated in many aspects of social behavior, including social play, aggression, and valuation of social stimuli across development. Here, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the degree to which early caregiving adversity was associated with altered coritocostriatal resting connectivity in previously institutionalized youth (n = 41) relative to youth who were raised with their biological families from birth (n = 47), and the degree to which this connectivity was associated with parent-reported social problems. Using a seed-based approach, we observed increased positive coupling between the ventral striatum and anterior regions of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in previously institutionalized youth. Stronger ventral striatum–mPFC coupling was associated with parent reports of social problems. A moderated-mediation analysis showed that ventral striatal–mPFC connectivity mediated group differences in social problems, and more so with increasing age. These findings show that early institutional care is associated with differences in resting-state connectivity between the ventral striatum and the mPFC, and this connectivity seems to play an increasingly important role in social behaviors as youth enter adolescence.

The pursuit of rewarding experiences motivates everyday human behavior, and can prove beneficial when pleasurable, positive consequences result (e.g., satisfying hunger, earning a paycheck). However, reward seeking may also be maladaptive and lead to risky decisions with potentially negative long-term consequences (e.g., unprotected sex, drug use). Such risky decision making is often observed during adolescence, a time in which important structural and functional refinements occur in the brain's reward circuitry. Although much of the brain develops before adolescence, critical centers for goal-directed behavior, such as frontal corticobasal ganglia networks, continue to mature. These ongoing changes may underlie the increases in risk-taking behavior often observed during adolescence. Further, typical development of these circuits is vital to our ability to make well-informed decisions; atypical development of the human reward circuitry can have severe implications, as is the case in certain clinical and developmental conditions (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). This review focuses on current research probing the neural correlates of reward-related processing across human development supporting the current research hypothesis that immature or atypical corticostriatal circuitry may underlie maladaptive behaviors observed in adolescence.