Brains Still Developing Until Age 25:
 Reasoning and Judgment Last to Develop

 

Considering the new research below, its obvious why those under 25 are ripe for reprogramming, however it also means that teens shouldn't ethically be targeted for credit cards in college and probably a host of other things ....

February 15, 2005 SAN FRANCISCO -- Modern science is proving what parents have suspected for years: Teenagers' brains aren't like those of adults. A teenager's prefrontal cortex, which is the brain's control room for moderation, impulse control and assessing consequences and judgment, is still developing. Teens who routinely get sidetracked and forget to take out the trash or who show other lapses in judgment that lead to household mayhem may be doing more than just tweaking an adult authority figure. Far from being hard-wired at puberty, teen brains are still growing, affecting everything from risk perception to their ability to plan and control impulses, health experts say. "We used to believe that children's brain development occurred very much early on during uterine growth and within the first six years of life," said Vaughn Rickert, professor of population and family health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "What we have discovered in the last two to three years is adolescent brains do change, and there is a wave of growth that does occur during the adolescent years." Just as kids go through a growth spurt where they shoot up in height and fill out into more adult-like proportions, the brain has its own timetable, which varies among teens. Changes in the brain's frontal lobes, largely responsible for controlling impulses and measuring risk and reward, are among the most dramatic, according to brain scans performed on teens at the National Institutes of Health." It appears that reasoning and problem-solving skills are among the last abilities to mature in the brain," Rickert said. The research may have implications for a wide range of social and health-related concerns, including why teens can't seem to get enough sleep and how parents can help them make decisions that protect their safety. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) study suggests that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully developed until age 25. Jay Geidd, the pediatric psychiatrist leading the NIH study, as well as his team members, were all shocked by the results. "We'd thought the highest levels of physical and brain maturity were reached by age 18, maybe earlier, so this threw us,” said Geidd. This new research from NIH could strengthen three bills submitted to the legislature by the Montgomery County Democrats on Jan. 28. The bill would place restrictions on cell phone usage and large numbers of passengers for all teen drivers as well as expand training, according to the Washington Post. Already in the state of Virginia, a bill was passed to ban cell phone usage for teens while they are driving, and new brain development research was cited in the bill proposal. Expanding experience Early adolescents tend to deal with situations on instinct and hang out with same-sex friends, she said. They may be monosyllabic and giggle a lot, especially when under stress.Teens in the earliest phase may perceive the social risk of not going along on a joyride or joining a gang as higher than the physical risk, making them particularly vulnerable to peer pressure.Teens in the middle stage are trying to separate from adults and can present the biggest challenges by pushing their buttons with all manner of rebelliousness.By late adolescence, kids are less concerned about fitting in with peers and more able to plan and follow through, she said. What they lack is experience from which to draw life lessons.

Brain contains warning system Feb 18, 2005 That odd feeling that things around us just aren't right, that something bad is about to happen, apparently has roots not in the paranormal but in a structure right in the top of our brains, a new study has found. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis report today in the journal Science that they have identified a brain region that acts as an early-warning system, working even at the subconscious level to help recognize and avoid high-risk situations. "Our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought," said Joshua Brown, a research associate in psychology and co-author of the study with associate professor Todd Braver. Experiments that coupled computerized modeling to predict brain function with neuroimaging studies done while volunteers responded to cues on a computer screen demonstrated that the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) not only helps us sort through difficult decisions, but also actually learns to predict bad consequences. "In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision among mutually exclusive options, or after they made a mistake," Brown said. Some scientists describe it as the "oops center" because the area near the top of the frontal lobes of the brain is literally the center of that irritated, sinking feeling we get when we realize we've made the wrong turn or clicked the wrong button on a control panel. "But now we find that this brain region can actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake, even before a difficult decision has to be made," Brown said. "It learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to a negative outcome, so that we can be more careful and avoid making a mistake."

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