Why do young people rise to puberty?

Scientists have discovered that the age of adults is like a jet full of passengers taking off, while the test equipment and the pilot system are still hastily assembled in the driver's room.

When the "cute baby" seemed to spend the night transforming into a teenager who was always ready to be provocative and irritable, when the ghost of puberty appeared noisy in a family. Sometimes parents don't recognize their children anymore. Neuroscientists have "looked" inside the heads of teenagers to find out why teenagers are often so strange.

At the National Institute of Mental Health, located a few kilometers northeast of Washington, every week, from 17 years, welcomes teens to brain scans. One by one, he was called in by Jay Giedd, a child psychologist, laid on the bed and pushed into a large gray tube.

In 15 minutes, radio waves and magnetic fields probe each region of the brain and create holograms from the data collected. As a result, the more data is available, the more shaky the idea of "puberty" age becomes.

Until the mid-1990s, experts believed that human brain development was completed by the age of 12. Strange changes in puberty were either hormones, psychological changes or both. two.

But when brain scans, people found very unexpected results.

Difficulty in puberty is actually because their brains are still unfinished as a construction site.(Photo: Corbis)

Instead of being an agency that was completed with solid structures, in the puberty of the puberty was a very busy construction site, with many scaffolding frames being erected, the new link was formed. and the old link was broken. Many construction sites believed to have been completed long ago are being re-measured, many others are clearly in the renovation period.

"The brain develops in the years of more active teenagers we think a lot," Giedd said. So the image of an almost mature, "biologically completed" person has only a few hormones left, fading away.

Initially, it formed countless new links to be able to handle and store information. But then, it cuts the diversity, leaving only the usual links. This is called "Darwinism in the nerves". Finally, the mature brain becomes a control and thinking machine with fewer connections but faster. It is mature.

Understanding the rebuilding of the brain has led to new perspectives on puberty

"Today, simple explanations are no longer complete," said Karina Weichhold, who participated in a long-term study of puberty at the University of Jena (Germany).

For example, the pineal gland in the brain produces melatonin that causes sleepiness more than 2 hours a day, so many teenagers fall into a "slow arrival" period - sleepier than the rest of the world. And also because melatonin decays later, these people wake up more tired in the morning.

The prefrontal cortex is the place where decisions are made such as "now I first do my homework, then go to garbage - then write to my friends".

But due to the continuous renovation, this shell is almost inaccessible. Therefore, there will be times when parents ask dozens of times that the child still does not bring garbage to go: that is because the prefrontal cortex evaluates the world and its signals are different.

A teenager in that teenage age actually had to answer the question screamed by his parents: "Do you understand?" Honestly, " Yes, I understand, but not as my parents think". But sometimes he seems to be "awake" with those rage? This may also be related to the development of the brain. Because between the ages of 12 and 18, the rate at which teenagers perceive emotions of those around them decreases by up to 20% - may be a sign of ineffective connection of neurological centers.

Strange misunderstandings and impulses of puberty

In a simple experiment, researchers from McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts demonstrated how strangely teenagers handle messages that are thought to be incomprehensible. They showed a series of young portraits and adults a series of portraits of many people with angry faces, grief, anger and joy. At the same time, the participants' brains were photographed.

Results: While adults use the prefrontal cortex to understand complex emotions, the puberty uses the amygdala - controlling instinctive reactions.

"I believe that the frontal lobe at puberty is not always working properly," explained Deborah Yurgelin-Todd, the group's leader. "So teenagers often don't think about the consequences of their behavior and there are behaviors that we value as impulsive."

For parents, that means that if you want a 15-year-old to do maths quickly, you should not emphasize the abstract disadvantages in the distant future ( "If so, then the latter will never be." decent work. " ) but should be more than the immediate benefits (" Have a good math score, I give you money to go to the movies! ").

Another cause for children to wake up without thinking is because the external pressure (nucleus accumbens) is in the immature brain. The department participates in the direction of rewarding, and it works more slowly for teenagers than for adults - meaning teenagers have to jump from a higher cliff to get the same feeling. as an adult.

At the same time, the teenage brain is immature enough to be worth the dangers that come with it. Therefore, accidents are not surprising. In this period (when people reached their peaks physically), the mortality rate in Europe was 2-3 times higher than that of children. Nearly all of the most lethal causes in this lifetime are due to mistakes when contemplating incorrect or excessive emotions.

However, many neuroscientists also believe that real experiences will have the opposite effect on the structure of the brain.

When will you grow up?

German professor of psychology Till Roenberg supports a new definition: Mature people are willing to go to bed early. Because retiring from life as a night owl marked no mistake in entering adulthood. Women walk through this "adult competition" on average at 19.5 years old and men with 20.9 years of age.

For brain researchers like Jay Giedd, a 20-year-old is still far from mature. He predicted that the human brain is still in a state of rebuilding until the age of 25.