Editorial: Alcohol and the Developing Brain: What to Expect Next?

Abstract

Sometimes anticipation is more fun than the actual event, and sometimes, pleasantly, it's the reverse. The difference between the anticipated value of an action and its actual outcome provides important feedback, which shapes our behavior and future plans and is a central feature of all modern theories of incentivized learning.¹ Contextually adaptive behavior and decision making depends critically on a constantly updated comparison between expectations and outcomes. To clarify the neural substrate of these mental comparisons, there has been an intensive examination of reward-related activity in the brain in the last few decades. Scores of neuroimaging studies have been performed to identify the brain regions involved in the representation of anticipated value and experienced outcomes. Systematic reviews of this neuroimaging literature indicate that a common set of value-coding brain regions are involved across a wide range of tasks.².