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Abstract Adolescence is a vulnerable developmental stage where significant changes occur in their bodies, brain, environmental socialization which may increase vulnerability to substance use Over the course of development through childhood to adolescence and eventually into adulthood, there are many changes in structural connectivity within specific brain regions, and functional network connectivity changes throughout development into adulthood. Executive functions are among the last mental functions to reach maturity. Attentional control appears to emerge in infancy and develop rapidly in early childhood. Cognitive flexibility, goal setting, and information processing usually develop rapidly during ages 7–9 and mature by age 12. Executive control typically emerges shortly after a transition period at the beginning of adolescence. Conceptually, altered cognitive function can be viewed as a hallmark feature of substance use disorders, with documented alterations in the well-known “executive” domains of attention, inhibition/regulation, working memory, and decision-making. Poor cognitive (sometimes referred to as “top-down”) regulation of downstream motivational processes whether appetitive (reward, incentive salience) or aversive (stress, negative affect) is recognized as a fundamental impairment in addiction and a potentially important target for intervention Estimates regarding the prevalence of cognitive impairment in substance use disorder patients vary widely and range from about 30-80%. These deficits may range from the relatively subtle temporary effects of different substance use to the moderate executive control deficits observed in chronic substance user even following several months of abstinence. |