https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab Health Science 3 en-us 2017-11-12 01:59:53 UTC 2017-11-12 02:09:30 UTC hello@padlet.com hallierobertson1010 https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935803 Teenager’ brains have yet to fully develop and that’s why they are seen as barely young adults.  They are no longer children but they haven’t yet fully grown – in body and in mind- to be considered responsible adults.  Puberty makes the newly sexually active teen seek emotionally charged activities, thus increasing risk-taking behavior.

]]> 2017-11-12 02:01:16 UTC https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935803 hallierobertson1010 https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935855 Puberty makes the newly sexually active teen seek emotionally charged activities, thus increasing risk-taking behavior. However, there is more to the story than that. Chronic lack of sleep, as it happens, is also an issue. Sleep is crucial during the adolescent years because major brain redevelopment occurs while teens sleep, due to the release of important growth hormones by the pituitary gland. Teenagers actually require more sleep than adults for this very reason, yet their sleep cycles are largely skewed.Sleep is regulated by cortisol, a hormone that helps us wake up, and melatonin, a hormone that makes us sleepy. In adults, melatonin is usually released by around 10 pm. In the teenage years, however, melatonin can wait until as late as 1 am to be released! This could be blamed on puberty, but also on the present culture that celebrates staying up late to participate in various global media. At the same time, most schools start quite early in the morning, so the youth, especially those in the new generation, are hardly getting any sleep at all! This naturally makes them more irritable and impulsive.

]]> 2017-11-12 02:03:54 UTC https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935855 hallierobertson1010 https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935897 The prefrontal cortex of your brain is the part where all your rational decisions are made. The neurons in the prefrontal cortex communicate with the neurons in the other regions of the brain through synapses, thus playing a major role in weighing choices, controlling emotional responses and impulses, and making judgments. In adults, this region of the brain is fully developed and connected to the rest of the brain, but to reach this stage, it has to go through a long, drawn-out period of chaotic development that begins with puberty and stretches until the mid-20s. Additionally, the teenage prefrontal cortex is not as effectively functional as it is in adults. Neurons are partially covered with an insulation called a ‘myelin sheath’, which increases the speed of transmission of information. This padding can make the transmissions up to one hundred times faster! But again, the myelin sheaths in teenage neurons are still only half-baked.]]> 2017-11-12 02:05:41 UTC https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935897 hallierobertson1010 https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935921 During your adolescent years, you start losing those connections that you don’t use anymore. Imagine the brain as a complex city with lots of roads. Some houses have 15 roads leading up to them, while others have just two. If the house with 15 roads is empty, it makes no sense to maintain those 15 roads. That is essentially what your brain does during the adolescent years. It breaks down all the connections that are no longer necessary, making your brain more structured and efficient. This process is called synaptic pruning. It starts at the threshold of puberty and tapers off at some point during your 20s.]]> 2017-11-12 02:07:03 UTC https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935921 hallierobertson1010 https://padlet.com/hallierobertson1010/47sgvfpdnoab/wish/205935939 This remodeling of the brain manifests itself in other ways as well. A group of scientists once hooked up a number of adults and a group of teenagers to MRI devices and asked them to identify expressions of adult faces on screens. While adults correctly recognized these expressions, teenagers usually misread them. The MRI devices also revealed that while the adults were using their prefrontal cortex to understand the expressions, teens were using their amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for inducing emotions and impulses, not logic and rational reasoning. The prefrontal cortex also helps you relate to other people, which might be why the teens misread the expressions. If the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex are not effectively linked, then concern can be misread as anger and worry misconstrued as disappointment, as teens cannot productively work through these emotions.This kind of emotional behavior also leads to more risk-taking. The nucleus accumbens forms early on in teens, which is the pleasure and reward zone of the brain. Studies show that when presented with a potentially large reward, adolescent brains light up far more than children’s brains or adult brains. If the rewards are small, teen brains hardly fire up at all. Thus, they are more likely to do anything to access psychological rewards through risky behaviors, drugs, alcohol, etc. Unfortunately, this period is also when the brain is most vulnerable, as it is still developing.

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