Status Updates From The Teenage Brain: A Neuros...

Heightened positive emotions or states of arousal are indicators of a likeliness to engage in risk-taking behavior; this may be why in casinos a person who is surrounded by free alcohol and food is more likely to take a spin of the roulette wheel or a pull on a slot machine.

Addiction, therefore, is more strongly “hardwired” into the adolescent brain, and as rehabilitation centers well know, detox is much harder and fails more often in adolescents, too.

As a result, these very plastic and active synapses respond by strengthening their connections, which causes more dopamine to be released in response to each stimulating experience. Hence the craving builds much faster in the adolescent brain than in the adult brain: neurons are more active to start with and have an exaggerated plasticity in response to exposure to the addictive stimulus.

addiction is really a specialized form of memory. It is a form of synaptic plasticity, or LTP, except that the action is not in the hippocampus but in the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area—key areas for the reward circuit. Just like LTP and memory, addiction happens because a drug or another pleasurable stimulus strongly activates these synapses.

Novelty and sensation-seeking seem to motivate every act. And if it’s not about risk-taking, then it’s about rebellion—against parents, against teachers, against anyone in authority. Evolutionarily, this kind of behavior makes sense. Adolescence is the time of life when the young separate from the comfort and safety of their parents in order to explore the world and find independence.

Melatonin, a hormone critical to inducing sleep, is released two hours later at night in a teenager’s brain than it is in an adult’s. It also stays in the teenager’s system longer, and this is why it’s so hard to wake your high schooler up in the morning. Adults, on the other hand, have almost no melatonin in their system when they wake up and therefore don’t have the same groggy feeling.

Bedtime isn’t simply a way 4 the body to relax & recoup after a hard day of working, studying, or playing. It’s the glue that allows us not only 2 recollect our experiences but also to remember everything we’ve learned that day. Sleep isn’t a luxury. Memory & learning are thought 2b consolidated during sleep, so it’s a requirement 4 adolescents and as vital to their health as the air they breathe & the food they eat

The good news about brain plasticity is that it may peak in childhood and adolescence but it never entirely stops—at least not until we do. The more you learn, the easier it is to learn the next thing.

Adults also have less glutamate and dopamine and fewer receptors available; therefore they are less cognitively flexible.

adolescents have less ability to process negative information than adults do, and so they are less inclined not to do something risky, and less likely to learn from the ensuing mistake or misadventure, than adults are.

adolescents have less ability to process negative information than adults do, and so they are less inclined not to do something risky, and less likely to learn from the ensuing mistake or misadventure, than adults are.