Variability in teen behavior-sometimes mature decision-making, sometimes irrational impulse-reflects the same developmental imperative. Having a really effective alarm system would not be good.” Learning about the world through such forays-which may involve risk-is “adaptive it’s what needs to happen. But what may seem like a defect is essential for development, she emphasizes. In particular, she says, the cortical “alarm system” that warns the individual of errant behavior is not entirely up to speed, promoting the sensation-seeking and need for novelty that characterize adolescence.
“But they’re not doing so in a controlled, sustained, reliable fashion,” she says.
#ADOLESENCE MAKE IMPULSIVE DECISIONS BECAUSE IT HOW TO#
“Adolescents are quite capable of making rational decisions… they just have more difficulty in the heat of the moment.” A measured appreciation of severe long-term consequences is no match for the immediate gratification promised by fast driving, excessive drinking, or unprotected sex, when the brain is in this mode, she suggests.īeatriz Luna, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees that cortical brain structures that tell us how to act have pretty much matured to adult levels, and adolescents are capable of engaging these systems to regulate behavior. Problems arise primarily in emotionally charged situations. “It’s really banging away, while the prefrontal cortex is not quite fully developed,” she says. The reward system, as Casey and others have shown, shows marked changes by adolescence and is highly reactive to cues of value in that period. Prominent within this decision-making circuit, in her view, are the emotionally reactive ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens, which responds to reward and the anticipation of reward, and cortical areas that inhibit impulses and regulate behavior. “We came up with a model of imbalance within a widespread circuit: various regions are activated and the one that screams the loudest wins,” Casey says. Research at Casey’s lab and elsewhere tells a story in which the evolution of physical and functional connections across the brain can help us understand the perils and successes on the road from adolescence to adulthood. We now think more in terms of neural circuitry how regions of the brain talk to one another.” “But is even less developed in children who don’t engage in such behavior. Casey, Ph.D., director of the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain (FAB) lab at Yale University, and a Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives member. “Over a decade ago, you’d read articles suggesting that adolescents engage in high-risk behavior because the prefrontal cortex was not fully developed,” says B.J. Understanding the process more fully, many hope, could lead to strategies that buffer this vital and vulnerable stage of development against serious harm. But there’s also increasing respect for the necessity of risk-taking for adolescents to become well-functioning adults. Why are otherwise smart, savvy young people notoriously prone to unwise, often impulsive actions that put themselves and others at risk? The question has engaged a broad range of research from which a complex, nuanced picture is emerging.īeyond the biological and environmental interactions that characterize adolescent brain development, researchers are teasing apart individual differences: why only some teens are risk takers, only some of the time. Among adolescents, unintentional injury (primarily motor vehicle accidents) is the leading cause of death, suicide and homicide follow, and excessive drinking, unprotected sex, and assorted misadventures leave a trail of turmoil.
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