Neural mechanisms of social reorientation across adolescence.

Editor's Note: These short, critical reviews of recent papers in the Journal, written exclusively by graduate students or postdoctoral fellows, are intended to summarize the important findings of the paper and provide additional insight and commentary. For more information on the format and purpose of the Journal Club, please see Adolescence is characterized by a unique set of physical, hormonal, and neural changes. In addition to changes in the body, adolescence is marked by great changes in social behavior. During this period in humans, there is an increase in interest in, and time spent with, peers and romantic partners, and adolescents establish an individual identity. This process of social reorientation is one of the most salient behavioral changes of adolescence (Nelson et al., 2005). It is hypothesized that changes in the social contexts that afford social learning, in combination with a specific set of changes in cognitive and affective systems, facilitate adolescent social reorientation (Crone and Dahl, 2012). More specifically, developmental theories suggest that changes in social behavior are related to increased perspective-taking and self-regulation skills (Blakemore and Robbins, 2012) and to increased