The teen brain is a marvel of smarts. It’s just not all filled in (yet).
June 29th 2010 00:19
Signature Tune
Dr. Frances Jensen gives teens and parents the facts about adolescent neurology. (Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe)
By Elizabeth Cooney
Adam Davis says one of his brightest friends makes the most ridiculous mistakes. For all his smarts, he’ll cross the street without looking.
Tweet 0diggsdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis What's a parent to do?
■ Be tolerant. Your teenage children are not trying to be jerks.
■ Cut down on the stress in their lives. It’s not an easy stage of life for them, either.
■ Make sure they’re not sleep-deprived. That amps up stress hormones.
■ Talk to your children.
Teen schemes
■ Count to 10 before you rush into anything.
■ Ask a friend for advice before you make a decision.
■ Keep in mind that drugs and alcohol can cause your developing brain to take an extra-hard hit.
■ Talk to your parents.
SOURCE: Dr. Frances Jensen
More scary is the stuff he hears from other friends.
“I know some people who are heavy drinkers, and they’ve actually told me they feel their memory is going. They drink and then they black out, more and more,’’ said Davis, a 20-year-old Lexington High graduate who attends Occidental College in Los Angeles. “They don’t change their behavior. I don’t think it’s addiction. I guess that gets into judgment.’’
Smart kids doing stupid things: It’s the teen brain paradox. Extraordinarily quick to learn and rapidly reaching fluency in abstract thought, teens still make bonehead decisions, perhaps more so when routines relax in summer. But that’s because they’re operating with brains that are still a work in progress.
Of all the organs in our bodies, the brain takes the longest to develop. Frontal lobes — the seat of judgment — are the last pieces to be fully connected to the parts of the brain that sense danger or solve calculus problems. A growing body of neuroscientific evidence places full brain maturity at about age 25, well past the point when young people begin to drive, drink, vote, or go off to war.
“We all know what the frontal lobe does,’’ said Dr. Frances Jensen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. “It’s insight, judgment, inhibition, self-awareness, cause and effect, acknowledgment of cause and effect. And big surprise: It’s not done in your teen years. Hence [teens’] impulsiveness, their unpredictable behavior, their lack of ability to acknowledge and see cause and effect, despite the fact they are getting 800s on their SATs and can be cognitively highly functional and memorize at a much more impressive rate than we as adults do later.’’
Doctors, developmental psychologists, and educators say the brain development message gains urgency as more is learned about the teen brain, a neglected area of research in Jensen’s view. The very qualities that make learning easier in youth also make habits like smoking or drinking more deeply embedded, for example. Then there are differences in brain chemistry that mean antidepressants may act differently on young brains, notably increasing suicidal thoughts in enough cases to warrant a warning from government regulators. While youth is a time of resilience in many ways, it’s a myth that people can make up for damage later when it comes to the brain, Jensen said.
“You’re actually more sensitive, more vulnerable’’ before adulthood, she said.
Jensen has been spreading this message with the zeal of an evangelist. A specialist in age-specific brain injury with a particular focus on epilepsy in newborns, she began exploring adolescent neurology when her two teenage sons baffled her with their bizarre behavior.
to read more go to the link above......
| 164 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
Even though interesting - I have a feeling the're certain behavior in teens that her scientific studies will never be able to explain
Comment by katyzzz
Photography Tips
MS Paint Art