The article reviews the neural mechanisms underlying the nonlinear changes in behavior observed during adolescence, relative to childhood and adulthood. It suggests that adolescents exhibit heightened responsiveness to incentives while impulse control remains relatively immature. Recent human imaging and animal studies provide a biological basis for this view, indicating differential development of limbic reward systems compared to top-down control systems during adolescence. This developmental pattern may be exacerbated in adolescents with a predisposition toward risk-taking, increasing the risk for poor outcomes. The review also discusses the importance of considering individual variability in neural responses to reward and the role of individual differences in predisposing some adolescents to take more risks than others. Overall, the findings highlight the need to understand the complex brain-behavior relationships related to risk-taking and reward processing in developmental populations.The article reviews the neural mechanisms underlying the nonlinear changes in behavior observed during adolescence, relative to childhood and adulthood. It suggests that adolescents exhibit heightened responsiveness to incentives while impulse control remains relatively immature. Recent human imaging and animal studies provide a biological basis for this view, indicating differential development of limbic reward systems compared to top-down control systems during adolescence. This developmental pattern may be exacerbated in adolescents with a predisposition toward risk-taking, increasing the risk for poor outcomes. The review also discusses the importance of considering individual variability in neural responses to reward and the role of individual differences in predisposing some adolescents to take more risks than others. Overall, the findings highlight the need to understand the complex brain-behavior relationships related to risk-taking and reward processing in developmental populations.