High five to the teenage brain!
From uncontrollable and immature to moldable and flexible: Brain research shows teenage brains in a new light, finally answering questions many parents and teachers have asked: “What is actually going on in the teenage brain? And are we somehow at fault?”
Let’s first get the two questions out of the way: No, it wasn’t your fault. And there’s a lot going on in teenage brains that we didn’t expect. But more on this later.
The term “teenager” first emerged in September 1941 in an article in the American journal Popular Science Monthly. Not many people were interested in the teenage brain at the time and so it lived in the scientific shadows for several decades: With research on it not sufficiently financed, it wasn’t properly researched and therefore obviously not well understood.
Instead, research back then focused on early childhood development and the young child’s brain’s ability to improve – and it still does so now. At the age of six, the brain has already reached about 90 percent of the adult brain size. Learning speed and growth rate are enormous during that phase of development. This accounts for the many studies homing in on this phase and explains how research funds are distributed. By contrast, public opinion on the teenage brain had been fixed for a long time. The bulk of the work – all that positioning, connecting and networking of billions of neurons and nerve cells – that was done and accomplished in early childhood. The steps to acquiring an adult brain were considered simple: just survive puberty, grow more mature and learn.
The teenage brain: A complex construction site
As the number of young people struggling with mental problems increased dramatically, interest in the teenage brain rose accordingly. The pandemic finally catapulted the state of young people’s mental health into public and political consciousness. This shift provided a massive incentive for research on the teenage brain and made one thing clear: The teenage brain is subject to immense restructuring to facilitate necessary learning and achieve the ability to function as an adult brain.
Researchers compare the teenage brain to a complex construction site. Unused connections in the areas of thinking and processing decline or disappear. At the same time new connections evolve or become more pronounced. This means: How and what young people learn influences the architecture of the brain. It is this flexibility and efficiency that transform the teenage brain into such a high-performance network and thus into a potential learning machine.
The crux of the matter is: The mega construction site in the teenage brain is organized asynchronously. This means that any modification starts out in the lower, posterior sector of the brain and then works its way toward the front and upwards – just like a wave. Certain areas of the brain have already been modified, others are about to be reconstructed and some lag several months or even years behind. The resultant chaotic welter of emotions and thoughts is unavoidable.
This becomes clear when we look at the development of the prefrontal cortex, which is an area of the cerebrum that’s often described as the brain’s control center. It is in charge of controlling emotions and decision-making processes. Whether it’s about planning actions, solving problems or considering consequences: The prefrontal cortex plays a key role. However, it is located behind the brow in the anterior part of the brain, which is the last area to be modified. This means that this area will still be in the process of being “constructed or reconstructed” until the teenage person is in their mid-twenties (!), and thus it will be functionally efficient only within certain limitations.
Teenagers are inclined to use the limbic system when making decisions or solving problems. This area is the “emotional center” of the brain and this could explain why teenagers often react, not in a rational or logical, but in an impulsive and emotional manner. Taking mom’s new car out for a spin? Or bursting into tears because of a stupid comment made by the person sitting next to you? Research recommends that people not dismiss such behavior as “foolishly making a fuss” but to conceive of it as an expression of people with adolescent goals, a great deal of interest in the opinions of peers and an enormously strong drive to explore new experiences and emotions. Impulse beats reflection. Emotion beats reason.
“Teenage boys shave and teenage girls can become pregnant; and yet, neither has a brain ready to take on the adult world, neurologically speaking.”
In her book, The Teenage Brain, brain researcher Frances E. Jensen describes the teenage brain as a brand-new Ferrari: primed and pumped but not yet “road-tested.” Jensen emphasizes: “We assume that someone who looks like an adult is also an adult mentally. Teenage boys shave and teenage girls can become pregnant; and yet, neither has a brain ready to take on the adult world, neurologically speaking.”
What’s most important: Meaning and purpose
How can teachers and parents deal with this Ferrari and how can they help it achieve top performance in spite of irrational tendencies? “If parents and teachers had to remember two things from the entire corpus of literature on teenagers, I would tell them: First, let them learn from their experience; second, create learning processes that make sense and have a purpose,” says Linda Wilbrecht, brain researcher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Th teenage brain: a brand-new Ferrari: primed and pumped but not yet “road-tested.”
“Adolescents have a hard time with learning subjects and instructions that aren’t meaningful nor serve a specific purpose,” Wilbrecht, herself the mother of two teenagers, explains. The typical parental statement – “High school is the right thing for you” – contains neither meaningfulness nor purpose and reinforces incomprehension and resistance. “If your goal is to be an architect, high school could be quite useful for you” – this is a statement that produces purpose and makes sense – even for teenagers.
Rewards and curiosity form a large part of the learning behavior of young people. Wilbrecht explains: “Adolescent brains are designed to explore, discover and make connections.” Such connections are to be taken literally since neurons stretch out to form new linkages. What’s required are proactive learning activities that spur curiosity and that are tied up with rewards – be it in the form of positive attention or recognition.
“If parents and teachers had to remember two things from the entire corpus of literature on teenagers, I would tell them: First, let them learn from their experience; second, create learning processes that make sense and have a purpose.”
Adolescents have done well in participatory action research whenever they defined the questions and discovered the answers on their own. For example: When they tried to find out why the school building was using too much water and then presented a solution to the school community. Moreover, the teenage brain is more socially adaptive and performs better than expected, Wilbrecht points out. “Collaborating with and learning with and from peers and adults is extremely important: The teenage brain needs input based on real experience.”
New studies and new findings
What is actually going on in the teenage brain? This question will spark interest when new answers and insights are provided in the future. Large-scale research projects, such as the American ABCD, or Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, Study will be a big factor in that. Currently, since September 2015, 11,880 children aged nine to ten years old have been participating in this study. It is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States.
Research teams track its participants over the course of 10 years through puberty up to young adulthood. The study promises to deliver new insights into the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of young people – and it seeks to show the effects of things like social media, hormone blockers and vaping on young people’s brains.
published in “Bildung Schweiz” (09/2024), www.bildungschweiz.com