Teens can be so messed up because their brains are getting restructured.
Philadelphia, March 28, 2008 – Many parents are convinced that the brains of their teenage offspring are different than those of children and adults. New data confirms that this is the case. An article by Jay N. Giedd, MD, of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health describes how brain changes in the adolescent brain impact cognition, emotion and behavior.
Dr. Giedd reviews the results from the NIMH Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project. This study and others indicate that gray matter increases in volume until approximately the early teens and then decreases until old age. Pinning down these differences in a rigorous way had been elusive until MRI was developed, offering the capacity to provide extremely accurate quantifications of brain anatomy and physiology without the use of ionizing radiation.
Our brains go through big changes during adolescence. The brain gets a lot of executive function enhancements.
The NIMH Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project began in 1989. Participants visit the NIMH at approximately two-year intervals for brain imaging, neuropsychological and behavioral assessment and collection of DNA. As of September 2007, approximately 5000 scans from 2000 subjects have been acquired. Of these, 387 subjects, aged 3 to 27 years, have remained free of any psychopathology and serve as the models for typical brain development.
Three themes have emerged from this and other studies in this new era of adolescent neuroscience. The first is functional and structural increases in connectivity and integrative processing as distributed brain modules become more and more integrated. Using a literary metaphor, maturation would not be the addition of new letters but rather of combining earlier formed letters into words, and then words into sentences and then sentences into paragraphs.
The second is a general pattern of childhood peaks of gray matter (frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe and occipital lobe) followed by adolescent declines. As parts of the brain are overdeveloped and then discarded, the structure of the brain becomes more refined.
The third theme is a changing balance between limbic/subcortical and frontal lobe functions that extends well into young adulthood as different cognitive and emotional systems mature at different rates. The cognitive and behavioral changes taking place during adolescence may be understood from the perspective of increased “executive” functioning, a term encompassing a broad array of abilities, including attention, response inhibition, regulation of emotion, organization and long-range planning.
What would be helpful: ways to identify when a kid's brain development has entered a stage which makes them more dangerous to self or other due. Detect a deficiency of functions that make them better able to understand themselves and others and more able to restraint their actions.
I can imagine some day drivers license requirements will include brain scans to show that one is not obviously prone to rash and dangerous actions. Also, I can imagine the development of drugs that will speed a teenager more quickly through stages since moms would just as soon have kids with more mature personalities once the kids hit adolescence.
By Randall Parker at 2008 April 23 10:50 PM Brain Development | TrackBackHave triplets of 13!! 2 Boys and 1 girl! Don't pity me though, as I'm studying psychoneurology and what better way than having live-in subjects! Whew! although it is tough, it helps not to loose your sense of humour.. and try and see the wood beyond the dendritic branches (i.e. trees ;)
Thanks
Boni
I believe I read in Scientific American about how teens (with greater gray matter) are actually more logical than adults - however this actually leads them to take unecessary risks since they overthink the odds.
For example a teen might look at the statistical chances of getting aids from another teen (particularly, say, in a middle class neighborhood) and then decide to have unprotected sex with said teen because the calculated risk is so low.
An adult, however, relying more on the abstraction (read commen sense) that a greater white matter ratio provides - would more likely decide that any risk is unacceptable (since it would not be as easy for them to calculate specific odds as for a teen) and therefore they would use protection with all partners.
And, imho, this makes loads of evolutionary sense as reckless behavior that leads to procreation is likely to be favored during optimal breeding age - while self-preservation is more useful during optimal rearing ages in the Human animal.
It would be interesting to me to see if there is a sharper increase in the white matter ratio in women who have recently had a baby, or if this ratio increase trend is entirely linearly dependant on the age of the individual.
The human brain matures from the back to the front. Prefrontal lobes (seat of judgment) mature last. Teens have no judgment. In fact, the maturation process is not complete until the middle 20s or later.
Hence, the popularity of Senator Obama among younger voters. ;-)
Young prodigies can do amazing things, but don't expect them to be wise.
I can imagine some day drivers license requirements will include brain scans to show that one is not obviously prone to rash and dangerous actions. Also, I can imagine the development of drugs that will speed a teenager more quickly through stages since moms would just as soon kids with more mature personalities once the kids hit adolescence.
For driver's licensing, do you think mass MRIs will be mandatory computer/network control of automobiles in high traffic situations?
As for speeding up development, don't you think it likely that it goes at the rate it does for good reasons? I don't know what they are, but human bodies reach physical maturity long before we reach mental maturity. Given the obvious costs of this situation, there must be compensating benefits if one takes evolution seriously
"I can imagine some day drivers license requirements will include brain scans to show that one is not obviously prone to rash and dangerous actions."
Not if it shows disparities in people caught up in the nets by race. Then it will be ruled illegal.
"For driver's licensing, do you think mass MRIs will be mandatory computer/network control of automobiles in high traffic situations?"
I just noticed that I left out an important word or three. I mean to say:
For driver's licensing, do you think mass MRIs will be mandatory before computer/network control of automobiles in high traffic situations becomes mandatory?