Status Updates From Ergen Beyni

There is solid data to show that your IQ can change during your teen years, more than anyone had ever expected. Between thirteen and seventeen years of age, one-third of people stay the same, one-third of people decrease their IQ, and a remarkable one-third of people actually significantly raise their IQ.

Only minutes after you learn a new thing, your synapses start to grow bigger. In a few hours they are virtually cemented into a stronger form.

the more frequently and the more recently we learn something and then recall it or use it again, the more entrenched the knowledge, whether it’s remembering the route between home and work or how to add a contact to your smartphone’s directory.

Changes associated with experience and stimulation, including brain size, gray matter volume, neuron size, dendritic branching, and the number of synapses per neuron. The more stimulation and experience, they concluded, the larger the neurons, the bushier the dendrites, the higher the number of synapses, and the thicker the gray matter.

Teenagers are different because of their brains and specifically because of two unusual aspects of their brains at this stage of their development. Their brains are both more powerful and more vulnerable than at virtually any other time in their lives. Even as they are learning things faster, their brains are eliminating gray matter and shedding neurons.

Teenagers may look like adults, they may even think like adults in many ways, and their ability to learn is staggering, but knowing what teenagers are unable to do—what their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral limitations are—is critically important.

Within the first year, the neural tracts that support brain regions involved in vision and other primary senses, as well as those involved in gross motor activity, are completed. This is, in part, why it takes about a year for a baby to become coordinated enough to walk.

When we crave ice cream or gambling or sex, we may not actually be craving sweets, money, or orgasms. We’re craving dopamine.

GABA and serotonin, act as antianxiety nutrients, calming the body and telling it to slow down. A lack of serotonin can result in aggression and depression.

known as the critical period. During this stage of development, a baby’s brain creates an astonishing two million synapses every second, allowing the infant to reach mental milestones like color vision, grasping, facial recognition, and parental attachment.

What we know now is that no two human brains are wired exactly the same, and experience shapes us all differently.

Multitasking is not only a myth but a dangerous one, especially when it comes to the teenage brain.

That 20 percent gap, where the wiring is thinnest, is crucial and goes a long way toward explaining why teenagers behave in such puzzling ways—their mood swings, irritability, impulsiveness, and explosiveness; their inability to focus, to follow through, and to connect with adults; and their temptations to use drugs and alcohol and to engage in other risky behavior.

The connectivity of the brain slowly moves from the back of the brain to the front. The very last places to “connect” are the frontal lobes. In fact, the teen brain is only about 80 percent of the way to maturity.