Question

How is technology helping us understand the teenage brain?

Answer 1

Advances in brain science and technology are helping us better understand how the adolescent brain functions. We now know that young people’s brains continue to mature until their early- to mid-20s, and adolescents’ brains are different from adults’ both structurally and in how they are influenced by chemicals produced by the body, such as dopamine.1 Adolescents are more likely to be influenced by peers, engage in risky and impulsive behaviors, experience mood swings, or have reactions that are stronger or weaker than a situation warrants.2 These differences do not mean that youth behavior that is harmful to themselves or others should be ignored. Rather, it means that courts, agencies and practitioners should use this knowledge to inform and perhaps modify their practices and policies.

Answer 2

Science and technology have helped to understand adolescent brain structures that are different from adult brains and how these differences influence their behavior.

Step-by-step explanation:

Technological advances and scientific research in the area of neuroscience highlight and explain the functioning and development of the brain of adolescents. A 13-year-old, for example, is not only too sleepy because he is “slack” or lazy. He is rather lazy because so many changes are taking place in his brain that hormones and neurotransmitters are produced that lead to certain behaviors, thoughts and feelings.

Understanding what's going on in the teenage brain is critical to guiding and educating you. It is not because your brain has a structure called the amygdala - which is not the throat - that is enlarged and more active at this stage and which is responsible for the more emotional reactions rather than the more rational reactions that we should allow the youngster to take the car of your parents in the night mute. Or even if you don't wake up for the first class because you stayed on the Internet - which gives you a lot more pleasure - until the early hours.

Through technology and research, it is possible to explain such behaviors through at least two brain regions, which are most evident in this age phase. One of them, which is part of the limbic system - region responsible for emotions among others - is the one that includes the amygdala. The other region is called the Prefrontal region.