Delanceyplace.com 9/9/09 - Teenagers

In today's excerpt - a controversial new theory on teenagers, underscoring how rudimentary our knowledge of the human brain remains:

"Thrill seeking and poor judgment go hand in hand when it comes to teenagers-an inevitable part of human development determined by properties of a growing but immature brain. Right? Not so fast. A study being published tomorrow turns that thinking upside down: The brains of teens who behave dangerously are more like adult brains than are those of their more cautious peers.

"Psychologists have long believed that the brain's judgment-control systems develop more slowly than emotion-governing systems, not maturing until people are in their mid-20s. Hence, teens end up taking far more risks than adults do. ...

"At least two observations undermine this theory, however. First, American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences. ...

"Now neuroscientists Gregory S. Berns, Sara Moore and Monica Capra of Emory University suggest that teen risk-taking is associated not with an immature brain but with a mature, adultlike brain - exactly the opposite of conventional wisdom.

"The researchers assessed 91 teens from ages 12 to 18 in two ways: First, teens completed the Adolescent Risk-Taking Questionnaire (ARQ), [and] ... second, a technology known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was used to assess the development of white matter in the frontal cortex of teens' brains. White matter consists of myelin, a fatty substance that coats the long axons, which carry brain signals; its main function is to increase the efficiency of neural signaling. Between childhood and adolescence, it grows in volume and becomes better organized, improving our ability to think and function. ...

"If the existing theory about the teen brain is correct, then the higher the ARQ score, the less developed the white matter should be - but that is not what the Berns team discovered. 'It was surprising,' Berns says. 'I assumed we'd find that risk-taking would be associated with an immature brain.' In fact, he found the opposite - a strong positive correlation between engagement in dangerous behaviors and the increased myelination typical of mature brains. In other words, young people who engage in dangerous behaviors generally have a more adultlike brain than their conservative peers.

"As for the conventional thinking about the teen brain, according to Berns, 'after reviewing all of the neurodevelopment stuff, I couldn't really find any link between brain development and adolescent risk-taking. Nobody denies that the brain develops or that teens take risks, but how the two got intertwined is beyond me.' Nevertheless, the accepted view of the teen brain is so powerful, Berns says, that his paper faced a lengthy and tumultuous review process. It appears in Wednesday's PLoS ONE.

"Says Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, one of the pioneers in modern neuroscience, ... 'So much for the much touted model that the tumultuous teenage brain is that way because it is not fully developed. Back to the drawing board again.' "

By Robert Epstein and Jennifer Ong, "Are the Brains of Reckless Teens More Mature Than Those of Their Prudent Peers?", Scientific American, August 25, 2009