Revised: March 2013 Making Sense of the Teenage Brain: Why They Don't Think Like We Do Your 13-year-old

daughter is freaking out on you. She screams out that you hate her, you think she is stupid, you think she's a lousy daughter, a sorry excuse for a human being. And all you did was ask if she would please not slam the car door so hard. Or maybe you asked her to please stop texting for two minutes so you could have a normal two-way conversation. Or maybe you asked her to please clean out the pockets of her best ripped jeans before she washed them in case they contain coins, pens, or sticky candy, bad food for the washing machine. No matter what you ask of her these days, she freaks out: yelling, crying, and saying things that don't make sense. And just six months ago, she would have shrugged, muttered okay, and complied. End of story. Now you are facing the stranger that your child has become and you suddenly feel confused, scared, and all alone; a wellintentioned parent, adrift at sea. Before you begin to panic and maybe freak out on your kid, exacerbating the problem, first stop and recognize that you are far from alone. Remember the stories your friends have told you about their own yelling matches with teen sons and daughters. Some of those stories sound just like yours. So you realize, as your friends have too, that something just isn't right here. These kids keep blowing things out of proportion, they misunderstand your good intentions, your moods, your facial expressions, and just basically everything that you say and do. You just can't do anything right. They seem to wish you would disappear off the planet and you are beginning to wish that you could!

Teenage Brain_Revision 2 Communication issues like these between parents and teens are not only common, but are often caused by physiological changes to the developing human brain changes that most parents have likely heard little (if anything) about. The human brain, our most awesome and complex organ, is about 90% of its full size by the time we are six years of age, according to David Dobbs of National Geographic Magazine. Yet it continues to grow and change throughout childhood, adolescence, and the teen years, even stretching on into adulthood. Until the late 20th century, according to Frontline (PBS) producer Sarah Spinks, however, brain studies were confined to the use of animal brains and to studies of the brain-injured. Her article indicates that all of this changed with the arrival of neuroimaging tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, commonly known as the MRI, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or the fMRI, the tool neurologists now use to study the brain activity of healthy children. Finally, scientists were able to compile data banks of information on the brains of children who had not suffered brain injury. In fact, in the 1990s, the National Institutes of Health began a project in which they studied the brains of more than one hundred young people, using these neuroimaging tools to put together the first complete series of brain scans ever taken of the adolescent brain, according to Dobbs. They proved that the brain actually goes through what Dobbs calls a "...massive reorganization..." or, to quote him further, "...extensive remodelling, resembling a network and wiring upgrade." Amazingly, these changes take place, he says, between the ages of 12 and 25. Neurology professors Frances E. Jensen and David K. Urion of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, however, claim that this time span is even longer-- that certain parts of the human brain are often not fully connected or operational

Teenage Brain_Revision 3 (online) until sometime between the ages of 25 and 30! MRIs indicate that whole sections of the teen brain can remain disconnected from the age of 12 up to sometime in the mid-20's, according to Debra Bradley Ruder of Harvard Magazine. The National Institutes of Health report that, at the same time, the brain's synapses the connections through which brain cells communicate, and the foundation of the brain's wiring system are growing and multiplying quickly. According to Dobbs, over time, the synapses that are consistently in use become stronger and those that are not die out. This "pruning" of synapses causes the brain's frontal cortex, also known as its gray matter (or "thought-centers"), to thin out and become faster, more productive and smoother-running. In addition, a type of fatty white matter in the brain known as myelin is developed by nerve cells to provide a layer of insulation for the brain's synaptic pathways in order to increase their speed and stability. One of the most significant findings discovered through the scans is that the human brain develops slowly in a "back-to-front" pattern, according to both Dobbs and Ruder. Researchers found that the very last sections of the brain to mature, in fact, are the two parts of the frontal cortex: the frontal and temporal lobes. The frontal lobe is the home of such vital functions as reasoning, judgment, impulse control, planning, and organization. The temporal lobes are the seat of emotional maturity. It's no surprise then that the thinking and behavior of teens can be so puzzling and unpredictable, given the continual state of upheaval that their brains are in. Further research done over the last dozen years or so, particularly that led by neuropsychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, PhD., of Harvard University's McLean Hospital,

Teenage Brain_Revision 4 has shown that adults and teens in fact typically use different regions of the brain to interpret the world around them. Whereas the frontal and lower parts of adult brains seem to work together to understand and communicate with the world about them, these sections of the teen brain are not yet working in tandem. The National Institutes of Mental Health also reports that testing has shown that teens simply process information differently than adults with fully developed brains. Yurgelun-Todd has this advice for parents: "Don't assume that because you've laid out the argument or presented the idea that teenagers are interpreting it in the same way you've presented it. The frontal cortex is continuing to develop, and if you don't have the neural structure in place, the adolescent cannot really think things through at the same level as an adult." Even as these neural networks are growing ever-larger within the teen brain, there is a kind of flexibility or plasticity that allows for easier learning. It's the reason children and adolescents can more easily learn a language or a musical instrument than an adult. On the other hand, this same flexibility makes the teen brain more susceptible to external stresses, more easily influenced by their environments. These studies and insights go a long way toward explaining the often puzzling and even erratic speech, attitudes, and behavior of teens. Now we know why they often act on impulse, without considering the potential consequences of their actions. And we know why they so often misunderstand the speech, emotions, and actions of others, particularly adults.

Teenage Brain_Revision 5 As a case in point, it appears that teens often have trouble correctly translating emotions in the faces of others and that they also tend to have stronger gut reactions to such visual cues than most adults would have. One study (still cited today by numerous sources) which proved this was conducted by Yurgelun-Todd and her colleagues in 2002 at Boston's McLean Hospital According to the transcript of an interview of Yurgelun-Todd done by Frontline (PBS), the doctors displayed pictures of adult faces with fearful expressions to a group of adults and to teens between 11 and 17 years of age while their brains were being scanned using functional MRIs. When asked, the adults were able to correctly identify the emotion as fear. Most of the teens identified the expressions they saw as showing shock, surprise, or anger. The scans of the teens' frontal lobes were then compared to those of adults and the researchers discovered, to their own surprise, that while adult brains were using the frontal lobe area (which, you may recall, governs judgment and reason) to determine the emotion projected, teens were actually using a different part of their brains to interpret the facial expressions. The teens were using their amygdalas structures located within the temporal lobe that cause a more emotional, impulsive, or "gut reaction" type of response. However, the older the teen, the more advanced was the ability to correctly read the facial expressions of others. So what does this research mean in the context of parent/ teen communication? YurgelunTodd, in the Frontline interview, says that since the study's findings show that teens are unable to accurately translate all of the emotions they see on the faces of others this is a sure sign that miscommunications and misperceptions are likely to occur when they interrelate with parents and other adults. And if teens see frustration where there is none, or anger when the adult is surprised, then they'll typically also react the wrong way

Teenage Brain_Revision 6 becoming overemotional or behaving in some other impulsive, "gut-reaction" manner. Their behavior or response won't be what the adult intended or expected. And this tendency to misread visual cues naturally includes the misinterpretation of adult postures and other types of body language as well. Added to all this is Yurgelun-Todd's reminder to parents that because of ongoing brain development, teens also have trouble with reasoning, judgment, and mentally organizing outside information. In fact, they tend to reorganize it their own way. Consequently, they are unable to adequately reason through and judge what adults are actually saying to them. And of course they doubtless feel that they are the ones misunderstood. Each side thinks they understand the other. But quite often neither does. Each side believes they are being clear though the pathway between them is usually blocked. Of course, when teen brain development progresses as it should, teens will naturally become more adept at processing information maturely and logically. Meanwhile, they are getting used to how the whole thing works. Vassar psychologist Abigail Baird refers to this phenomenon as "neural gawkiness," comparing it to the awkwardness teens often go through in getting used to their own physical bodies. And any sort of stress, exhaustion, or other problem can cause a "misfire," to use Dobb's word, in the neural circuitry. So, given what's going on inside the teen brain, it's no wonder teens typically feel disconnected from their parents, their immediate environments, and the outer world they live in. It's no wonder parents feel not only disconnected from their teens, but scared and confused too. And it's certainly no wonder that both sides struggle to express what they really want to say, and to hear what's really been said. No wonder that teens don't "get" us

Teenage Brain_Revision 7 and that we don't "get" them. And yet, as hopeless as it all sounds, there is hope, and on many levels. And this is true despite the fact that when we consider the busy and interactive lives of teens and young adults, we are sobered by the realization that many of these people with "disconnected" and/or undeveloped brain sections are not only our own children, their friends, and our neighbors' kids, but fellow students, colleagues, and yes, quite often people we meet here and there in the daily course of living our lives. Each day we interact with myriads of teens and young adults in various capacities, including our own teens. But now we can interact with the understanding that awareness brings, being fully aware of differences in thinking that we will often encounter with these individuals, and the possible reasons why. Differences that we now know may be influenced by ongoing brain development. And so, because of this new understanding, there is hope for us. Hope that we, as parents, can be the calm ones now, that the panicky moments are over and the false guilt trips gone. Hope that we might now sit down with our kids and explain what's going on in their brains, maybe show them the research, explaining that it's a natural, necessary process. Hope that more adults, especially parents, will become better educated on the topic of teen brain development and become equipped with practical relational tools to help bridge those communication gaps. Hope, most of all, that we will finally communicate, and that our teens know that we won't give up until we do.