The biological, environmental, and psychosocial changes that occur in adolescence engender an increase in risk taking often linked to the high rates of motor vehicle crashes amongst young drivers. Most U.S. adolescents suffer from poor sleep, which is known to exacerbate the risk of driving crashes; however, research has yet to uncover a neurobiological link between sleep and risky driving in adolescence. Here, we examined potential moderators of the sleep-risk relation in fifty-six adolescents (14–18y/o) as they completed a driving task during fMRI. While poor sleep was associated with increased risky driving (i.e., running more yellow lights), good sleep emerged as a novel buffer against risky driving in lower sensation-seeking adolescents. Neural activity in the ventral striatum (VS), a key node of the risk-taking circuit, also moderated the sleep-risk association: sleep was related to risk-taking in individuals demonstrating high, but not low, VS response during risky decision-making, suggesting that reward-related neural response may underly the connection between sleep and risk-taking in adolescence. This study sheds light on the risk of driving crashes in youth by highlighting sleep as both an exacerbator and a buffer of risky driving in adolescence. Taken together, these results underscore the importance of improving adolescent sleep.

青春期发生的生物学，环境和社会心理变化导致冒险风险增加，而这往往与年轻驾驶员中高比例的汽车碰撞事故有关。大多数美国青少年的睡眠不足，已知会加剧撞车事故的风险。然而，研究尚未发现睡眠与青春期危险驾驶之间的神经生物学联系。在这里，我们检查了56名青少年（14-18y / o）在功能磁共振成像期间完成驾驶任务时潜在的睡眠风险关系调节剂。虽然睡眠不足与增加的危险驾驶（例如，行驶更多的黄灯）相关，但良好睡眠是对抗寻求低感觉的青少年危险驾驶的一种新型缓冲。腹侧纹状体（VS）的神经活动是冒险电路的关键节​​点，它也缓解了睡眠-风险关联：睡眠与个人的冒险行为有关，在风险决策过程中，VS表现为高但不低的VS反应。这表明与奖赏有关的神经反应可能是青春期睡眠与冒险之间的联系。这项研究通过强调睡眠既是青春期的加剧者又是危险驾驶的缓冲带，揭示了青少年驾驶事故的风险。综上所述，这些结果强调了改善青少年睡眠的重要性。