Many teens with substance use disorders take serious risks, including drunk driving, fighting, heavy drinking, injection drug use, and more. of such risks, researchers take pictures of the brains of typically developing adolescents and those with substance use disorder, as adolescents decide between engaging in safe or risky behavior. The first row in the figure above shows brain activity as children make decisions that lead to cautious behaviors. At this time, in many key decision-making areas of the brain' colored areas' typically developing adolescents have more brain activation than youth with substance use disorders. Similarly, while making the decision to engage in risky behaviors, developing adolescents again showed more brain activation (second row). The brains of adolescents with substance use disorders do not work as hard as those of typically developing young people when deciding whether to take a risky or safe action, and this could help explain why adolescent substance abusers have tend to take more risks. Researchers are now trying to find out if these differences in activation are due to the drugs that some adolescents use or if the differences existed before the onset of drug use.