"Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain"

Dan Siegel
All right, welcome to authors at Google here in Los Angeles. Normally we begin author
events with reading a short bio of the speaker downloaded from the internet or emailed to
us by a publicist.

Well, I encourage everyone to Google Dr. Daniel Siegel and read about the schools he
attended and books he published.
It is perhaps a better use of the short time allotted for introduction to explain why it is so
exciting to have Dr. Siegel here at Google talking about adolescence.
The other day, a friend of mine said this about his 16-year-old son.
Two years ago, he said, we were best buddies. Now all I am to him is a driver and an ATM
machine.
Another friend offered the following pearl of wisdom. Yes, teenagers want nothing to do
with you, and they can't wait to leave home. But don't worry. They'll be back when they're
23.
These two quotes are typical of how the grownup world views adolescents as inaccessible,
a great big black hole, a terrible thing we need to get through as best we can until a
grownup emerges on the other side and we can finally breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Grownups and adolescents find each other frustrating and infuriating.
I suspect that some of you are parents who came to this talk hoping for tips on how to
handle their teenagers.
And yes, Daniel Siegel's book "Brainstorm" provides a richness of insight and practical
advice to meet that need.
But what makes this book truly revolutionary is its insistence that adolescence is not a
problem to be tackled but an opportunity, an amazing opportunity to be cultivated and
celebrated.
Those same brain changes that can cause so much anguish have the potential, if correctly
understood, to not only be a source of great satisfaction but in fact to quote from the book,
"they can enable adolescents to go on and lead great lives of adventure and purpose."

Reading the book, you discover that the aggravation normally associated with adolescence
is an unnecessary cost of how we deal with it.
Furthermore, hallmarks of adolescence are youthful energy, creativity, passion, original
thought, and panache for social connectivity.
These are resources that are now wasted on a gargantuan scale.
A better understanding of the brain can allow adolescents to make use of these gifts towards
the making of a better society and a better world. Ladies and gentlemen, Daniel Siegel.
DANIEL SIEGEL: Thank you, Ron. That was beautiful.
Thank you, Ron. That was really beautiful. Can you hear me all right?
AUDIENCE: Yep.
DANIEL SIEGEL: Great. Well, it's an honor to be here with you at Google. This is my
fourth Google campus that I'm visiting. And this one is local, so it's an easier trip for me. So
it's really great to be here.
What I'm going to do is give you a short overview of the ideas in "Brainstorm: The Power
and Purpose of the Teenage Brain" and look at some myths about adolescence and what are
the actual truths. And by understanding the truths, we actually empower adolescents and
adults who care for adolescents or actually any adult who once was an adolescent to
actually reclaim a certain aspect of celebrating this period of life. So we'll then take time for
a discussion.
Because if it's like past experience I've had at Google, it's really great to actually make this
more interactive in a discussion period. So I'll leave time for that too so first let me just
check with you.
How many of you have adolescents at home right at this moment?
OK, so there's probably a sense of urgency then.
How many of you have younger kids at home and you're getting ready for them to turn into
adolescents? Great and how many of you once were adolescents? Anyone? Great, so that's
pretty much everyone. So for myself, I come from a background where basically I trained
in science and biochemistry and then went on to medicine and then became a psychiatrist
after training initially in pediatrics and then adult psychiatry, became a child and adolescent
psychiatrist. And then when I was trained in research, I was really beginning at the period
which was called the decade of the brain, 1990. And so it became an incredible opportunity
to actually take the science of the brain and try to apply it to practical clinical use in
psychiatry and so I worked to help create a field called personal neurobiology. And that

field basically takes all the different disciplines of science and puts them together into one
framework. And so we have now 36 textbooks that I've edited in that series. And just to
show you just some examples, these are other books besides the "Brainstorm" book. This is
basically just so you know where the science we're about to talk about comes from.
This is a graduate school textbook that I wrote called "The Developing Mind," which
basically takes all these different fields of science and combines them into one. If you like
non-linear books, this book, "The Interpersonal Neurobiology Pocket Guide" is actually
written in a non-linear way. So especially if it's on a tablet, you can bounce around
wherever you feel like going and learn all about this field. And if you have younger kids, a
book I wrote with my student now colleague, Tina Payne Bryson, "The Whole-Brain
Child," will talk about a lot of what we're talking about now applied to younger children.
So in my own case, I have not just worked in the field of interpersonal neurobiology but
also have worked at home with my partner and wife, Caroline Welch, where we were
deeply trying to raise our kids, who are now almost 20 and 24.
Fact, our son is traveling around the world, and just two days ago I got back from spending
two weeks with him after not seeing him for a year. And it's true.
When they get in their mid-20s, there's this wonderful change. And it was an incredible
opportunity. And these kids in their 20s that we have are still adolescents. So the first myth
I want identify is that people use the term adolescents synonymously with the term
teenager. And that's just not true. The adolescent period can be defined as a period between
childhood and adulthood. And there was adebate a while ago, should we just get rid of the
term adolescence?
Is it meaningless? Is there just childhood dependency and then adult responsibility? But it
turns out that not just in people who live on the West
Coast or people who are human beings but actually many mammals have an adolescent
period, which is distinct from childhood and distinct from adulthood.
So it isn't just we that have this period.
Now, what is this period all about? Well, it's not just about having a number that begins
with teen, like 19, or 18, or 17.
It turns out that there are change in the brain that we didn't know about before 15 years ago
that identify that the adolescent period is more than just going through puberty, which is
sexual maturation, which now begins, by the way, much earlier than it ever has.
And the period following puberty, which is the adolescent period generally it doesn't
always work that way,but this period of, if you will, a developmental time when you're not

just dependent on adults but you're not just working with adult responsibility of raising a
family or having work.
This period between has a certain purpose and power to it that we never really understood
before.
So for many adults, even when you just approach the teenage years, you say, oh my gosh.
My kid is going to be a teenager. I don't know what's going to happen. You have a lot of
trepidation. And what we're about to do is identify the myths that when you understand
them you can have celebration, not trepidation.
And what are the basic ways that the brain is changing that can identify these myths and
clarify them? So the first thing is that the adolescent period is not just the teenage years.
That's the first myth. That changes in the brain happen between around 12 years of age
more or less a little bit younger in girls, a little bit older in boys, but it's around the same
just around now before the teenagers begin.
And it ends in the mid-20s. And the ending is of what? It's actually of a period of brain
change that's called remodeling. So this remodeling period is happening into the mid-20s.
And by understanding the nature of the remodeling, we actually can understand a lot about
what adolescents go through. So let's just review very briefly the brain in general.
Let's talk about how the brain interacts with culture, and family life, and interaction with
peers. And let's look at then why a child's experience may be different from an adolescent's,
which may be different from an adult's. So Ron was really nice to actually come early this
morning and tape underneath your chair a model of the brain that you get to take home with
you.
So if you reach underneath your chair with your arm and then pull your arm out, you'll
notice there's a hand attached to your arm. And this is a handout for you for today.
If you fold your thumb in the middle of your hand and fold your fingers over the top, this
brain would be oriented in your hand like that. My daughter says, never say it's a handy
model of the brain, but it is.
It's very Handy because it actually is a pretty good example of how the brain is structured.
So before we get to the details, let's give the first very brief overview of brain anatomy,
function, and development.
Genes play a very important role in how the basic cells of the brain, the neurons, will link
up to each other. And even the supportive cells, the glial cells, oligodendrocytes ?? and
astrocytes will perform functions that we don't even understand.

It's a big, big mystery, but the parts we do understand are these. That the way neurons get
connected influence how you think, how you feel, and how you behave.
So thinking, feeling, behavior is a part of our mental life. So in this way, we say that the
structure of the brain influences its function, and the function of the brain influences in part
mental life.
So when we say an adolescent's mental life is changing, right away we need to think in part
that's due to what's going on in the body and in particular what's going on in the brain. So
for a child basically what happens is this. In utero and I don't want to shock anyone, but the
sperm and egg get together, and they form a single cell being that then becomes 2 cells, 4,
8, 16, 32, 64, etcetera. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it starts to specialize in its
function.
Some of those cells will come from the outside and become the neural tube as they
invaginate ??? inward. And that's important because the nervous system, which is this
neural tube, starts as skin cells.
And in fact the skin is the interface of the outer world and the inner world. And your
nervous system, including your brain, is always about the interface of the inner and the
outer. And that becomes extremely important in understanding adolescence.
That the nervous system is basically fancy skin cells, if you will, that are always about
saying, what's going on inside? What's going on outside? How do I bring those two
together? So what happens in utero is that this nervous system within the body is
developing a lot influenced by genes and also of course the stress of the mom, chemicals
that the mother may ingest. Smoking, drinking, different things can affect the way this
nervous system is going to grow.
At birth, when we come now to the structure of the brain, let's take a look at it. Basically it's
oriented like this.
The neural tube, the spinal cord in your back, will be represented by your wrist. The clump
of neurons that collects up in the head that we'll just call the brain has three major parts that
change a lot in adolescence, so we need to review them to understand adolescence. If you
lift up your top rea try this out so you can go with me. Lift up your thumb area.
The first area is the brain stem. And this is the area that regulates basic bodily processes
like what's going on in the heart, the lungs, and the intestines. And it also has clusters of
neurons that control the reactive states of the four F's that you may be familiar with. Some
of them, fight, flight, freeze, and faint.
So usually people say fight, flight, but it's actually two other ones in addition. Fight, flight,
freeze tightening your muscles when you're scared or fainting where you're totally

collapsing. So those areas are regulated by the brain stem, very old, 300 million year old.
So it's called the old reptilian brain. And then if you come now up in evolutionary terms
and also growing in utero is the secondary area of the brain called the old mammalian
brain. You'd have two thumbs for it to be a perfect model. The thumb represents the limbic
area. 200 million years, it has regions that you're probably familiar with called the
amygdala, the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, and other regions as well. The limbic area
has five big functions. And we're going to review them briefly because to really understand
adolescents, we need to understand what's going on in the limbic are and how it
communicates with the brain stem and the body.
So here are the functions. And I'm going to just point out how it develops and then what
changes in adolescence so you can understand it. The first thing to say is that this limbic
area is going to interact with what's above it, the cortex, we'll talk about later. And what's
below it, the brain stem and the body. So it's like a way station that allows all these different
inputs to be coordinated. So if you're thinking about what you do at Google and how you're
influencing the sharing of energy and information across humanity, in many ways the
limbic area is going to serve this kind of function of pulling these different things together.
So the limbic area is important in working with the brain stem and the body in creating
emotion.
So when you feel a big feeling, a big emotion, which adolescents feel more of, it's coming
from the body, the brain stem, and the limbic area. And because those are all below this
higher area, the cortex, it's called the subcortical source of emotion. Which is why when
computer programmers think about creating emotion in a computer, I always discuss? with
them, well you probably need that computer to have a body.
Because to really really have emotions, you need a heart, lungs, intestine, muscles, bones,
hormones to have a true experience of what we experience as humans. So the body comes
up all sorts of channels, the first layer of this spinal cord called lamina 1.
The 10th cranial nerve, all the body input comes up to the brain stem and the limbic area,
and we get an emotion that way. And then it pops up into our higher areas where we have
consciousness, the cortex. So these subcortical things in adolescence are more robust.
There's a kind of emotional spark in adolescence. So if you compare a 10-year-old to a 14year-old, they're very different not just that they've accumulated four more years of life.
But these subcortical areas are just more active. And we'll talk about why that would be a
good thing soon.
OK, so emotion is number one. Number two is motivation. The limbic area works with the
brain stem to motivate people to do different things. And of course, the motivation of a 14year-old, as any middle school teacher will tell you, is very different from a 10-year-old.

That's because the limbic area is changing dramatically for very important and good
reasons. Then when parents don't understand them, they clamp down on what's happening
to the adolescent instead of supporting them. And what the "Brainstorm" approach that
we're going to talk about can do is change our whole cultural conversation so we recognize
what's happening in the brain and support adolescents rather than try to imprison them. The
third thing the limbic area is involved in is called appraisal.
Appraisal, and I don't know what the computer equivalent would be, but appraisal is
basically where you're evaluating the significance of something happening.
So the first layer of appraisal says, is this thing happening something I should invest energy
and time in? Like right now I'm appraising my voice is getting hoarse, so I'm going to get
my water bottle that my daughter gave me before she went away to school.
And now my limbic area will appraise how did my voice sound? And it sounds better, so I
put this down. So that would be an appraisal. I'm paying attention to something.
The second thing is, is the thing I'm paying attention to good or bad? And if it's good, how
do I get more of it? If it's bad, how do I get less of it? And those are basic appraisal
functions of the limbic area. So that's number three. Number four is different kinds of
memory are mediated through the limbic area. We won't talk about that, but the
hippocampus plays an important role in creating factual memory or autobiographical
memory rather than just kind of the visceral memory that you have called implicit memory.
And number five is attachment. This becomes extremely important in adolescence.
Attachment is what we have as mammals. This is the old mammalian brain. Attachment is
where, as a kid, you rely on another person, your parent usually, an attachment figure, to
give you four S's. They see you. They keep you safe. They soothe you. And they give you
an internal feeling of security if you have the first three. So being seen means someone
identifies what's going on beneath your behavior. Not just seeing your body move, but
thinking about your feelings, identifying what you're thinking about, what has meaning for
you, what your needs are.
That's what I mean by being seen.
Safe means two things. They protect you from harm, and they aren't a source of terror. And
if they are, they repair that rupture very quickly. Because any parent can lose it, but if you
lose it as a parent, and I talk about this in a book I wrote called "Parenting from the Inside
Out" with Mary Hartzell.
If you lose it and don't make a repair, your child will have a very negative outcome in their
attachment category that they developed.

And that's explored in all these different books and in "Brainstorm" too. So safe means not
being a source of terror and also protecting your child from danger. So if you are seen, and
if you are safe, and if when you're distressed you're soothed that is, I have a really
uncomfortable feeling. I'm just a kid. I don't know how to get this feeling to feel better.
It just feels bad, whether I'm sad, angry, frightened, whatever it is. I go to this other person,
my attachment figure. They do something with me. They hug me. They talk to me. They
just listen to me and hear my story. And I feel better. An attachment figure soothes the
person who's attached. OK, so what's so important about this in adolescence? And it's what
you said before, Ron. When you're a kid and you're distressed, who do you go to for
soothing? Your parents, your attachment figure. But when you're an adolescent, who do you
tend to go to? Your peers, and that is a healthy, natural change that if a parent is not aware
that this is going to happen, they start feeling left out and rejected and think there's
something wrong. When in fact it's something right, because overall what the adolescent is
preparing to do is to leave home. So picture this. Just so you can understand the attachment
shift, just imagine this scenario.
You're in bed. You're sleeping really deeply. The light comes streaming in through the
closed blinds of your window, and someone comes in your room. Let's say it's your mom.
Someone who loves you like crazy gives you a kiss on the forehead and says, good
morning sweetie. And you begin to rouse, and she goes, what would you like for breakfast?
And you go, I'll have some oatmeal, mom. And she shouts down to your dad, so-and-so
would like oatmeal. And so your dad starts preparing oatmeal. You come downstairs. You
have your pajamas on. You have your oatmeal. You then get dressed. Maybe you watch a
little TV or you start getting ready for school. Then you go off to preschool. And at
preschool, you play with friends, and you learn how to share, and you have a snack, and
maybe you come home for lunch. You're getting a little tired, so you take a nap.
And then you play some more out in the yard. And then you have another snack, and then
you dance around with your mom, or your dad, or who's ever there.
And then you get a little hungry, so they make you dinner. And then you're getting a little
tired. You get in the bathtub. They scrub you down. And then they put you in bed, give you
a massage, read you a story, and sing you a song. And you fall off to sleep. Now, if you kept
the same child mind that was soaking that in that the majority of kids actually get, maybe
not everyone, but who in their sane mind would leave that? Right? Now, I know a lot of
adults who are trying to get that back from their partners, which is probably a good idea.
But as an adolescent, if you think about it, nature's got to do something to the brain to say, I
know that's a pretty good setup you got. But I need you to go from the familiar home,
where you're comfortable and where you're safe, to try something that's unfamiliar, that's
uncomfortable, that's uncertain instead of certain, and that's potentially unsafe.

So what are you going to do if you're nature to make sure that this kid when he's 55 years
old isn't still living at home? You've got to do something to this brain. That's what we're
going to look into the details. So part of it is you make the emotions revved up. Because
emotion in many ways is evoking motion. It gets the being with the emotion to do
something. That's what really emotion is all about, evoking motion.
So we know that's going on. The limbic area attachment is changing, so it says, hey, I'm not
going to turn to my parents anymore.
I'll use them as an ATM machine and a driver. But they're not going to be my source of
support. They're not going to be my homies anymore. I'm going to find some other people
with whom I turn to when I need support, because they're getting ready. So this is very, very
important. Now, if you bend your fingers over the top, this is the cortex.
This is the outer bark of the brain. That's what cortex mean. It's sometimes called the neomammalian cortex. So the limbic area is the old mammalian brain, 200 million years old.
The cortex is the new mammalian brain. The frontal area would be from your last knuckles
forward, is the largest in primates. And the front of the front area is the most elaborated in
human beings. It's called the prefrontal cortex. It's what you hear about all the time. It's why
we have such big foreheads compared to our ape cousins.
We have this very elaborated prefrontal cortex. So the frontal area in general allows you to
think, conceive of things, program, think about history, think about coming here to a
meeting, and bringing lunch, and making sure you get to the next appointment on time, all
this stuff. So the frontal area is really important. And this is the area that matures last.
So what happens in this adolescent brain is basically this. In utero, the brain stem is well
developed. The limbic area is partially developed.
The cortex is based undeveloped at birth. What this means is that once the baby is out,
interactions with the world in addition to genes will influence the way neurons connect to
each other.
So neurons firing leads to neurons rewiring. And Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize for this
in 2000 showing that when you get neurons to fire off, they actually activate genes in a way
that gets them to increase their connections to each other, increase even their myelin, which
is like a sheath that increases the speed of interconnection among the neurons the way they
communicate with each other. 100 times faster and 30 times shorter refractory period,
resting period between firings. So 100 times 30 is 3,000. When you've myelinated neurons,
you basically are allowing them to be coordinated and efficiently communicating with each
other 3,000 times more. So when you watch people do the Olympics, those Olympic
athletes have been practicing something for so many hours, they've laid down myelin.

Because skill building is based on myelin growth. So here's what happens in childhood. For
the first dozen years, more or less, this brain is like a sponge.
It just soaks in adult knowledge, soaking in, soaking in, and soaking in. But then nature
does something really interesting. Instead of just having the neurons build their synaptic
connections with each other pretty progressively throughout childhood, once the switch
happens and this is only something we've known for the last 15 years.
The studies at my university, UCLA, and also National Institute of Mental Health, we've
studied kids across the developmental period and have found the following shocking
findings.
The remodeling that no one expected to be happeningwe just thought the brain would
continue to grow new stuff and people thought it was raging hormones that would drive an
adolescent mad, which is a second myth we're going to bust right now.
The changes in adolescence are not due to raging hormones. Puberty happens, and
hormones rise. But I don't even know what a raging hormone would be.
Hey, I' a hormone, and I'm really mad. What does it mean to be raging hormones?
It's not from raging hormones, but everyone believes that.
And of course, if it is raging hormones, there's absolutely nothing you as a parent or you as
an adolescent can do about it.
I'm walking around in this body, and I got these hormones that are raising out of control, so
of course I don't know what I'm doing.
I've got raging hormones. But if it's the brain, no matter how that brain is changing, we now
know what you do with your mind can change the function and even the structure of your
brain. So the empowerment that we're about to talk about is profound.
It clarifies what the myths are, but the truths turn out to be liberating. So the first thing that
was found which shocked everyone was that the brain, instead of to continue to develop
synaptic connections, actually starts destroying them. It's called pruning.
The brain starts to eliminate not only the synaptic connections that were laid down, some of
them, but it actually starts destroying neurons themselves.
You get less synaptic connections, the connections among neurons, and even less neurons.
And everyone was going, wow, what's going on? And then as the adolescent years
progressed, a second part of remodeling happened.

Because the first is you're getting rid of basically connections you don't need. The second
thing that's part of remodeling besides the first part, pruning, is that you start to lay down
myelin in a big way.
So the adolescent brain is going to become more specialized by getting rid of circuits it
doesn't need and then more efficient in its coordination and balance more integrated, if you
will by taking the remaining connections and allowing them to be 3,000 times better at
communicating with each other. So the second dozen years of life, of course you continue
to learn with laying down new synaptic connections.
But you're going from being a generalist of a child to a specialist of an adolescent. Now,
what this means for an adolescent and I wrote the "Brainstorm" book for both adolescents
and adults to read for the adolescent reading it, I say to them directly, because there is no
book, for anybody there's no book written about these brain changes for the general public.
There's nothing. And I wanted something to be available for my own kids, or their friends,
or people I work with. I'm an adolescent psychiatrist. So an adolescent themselves could
read this and know from the inside out what's going on. When you go around to high
schools, which I'm doing a lot lately, I say, what have you been taught about the brain? And
this is what the kids say, whether it's 7th grade or 12th grade, nothing.
They've been taught nothing about their brain. I mean, there are exceptions in charter
schools now, but for the most part, people are not taught anything about their brain, which
is amazing because we know a lot. And when you know about the brain, you can do
something about its function and structure, even if you have genetic risks going on, as we're
studying at UCLA. So here's the deal. Remodeling in the adolescent brain takes place
starting around 12, and it goes on to the mid-20s.
This is why I say adolescence doesn't end when the 19 year birthday follows the year and
you turn 20. It doesn't end. It's the mid-20s. So this adolescent period of remodeling is
happening all through the mid-20s. Now, that's really interesting, because it means that
they're going to be continuing changes. So let's review some of these basic myths. We said
number one, adolescence is more than the teenage years. Number two, we said that this
period of time is a time when the brain is changing, and it's not raging hormones that lead
to the significant changes of adolescence. It's actually brain remodeling.
A third myth that you may have heard, which is what was said in the introduction, is many
adults and therefore the adolescents who are hearing the adults say this approach
adolescence with unbelievable trepidation instead of celebration.
And this trepidation is that, oh my god, it's going to be a horrible period I've just got to get
through. And what I want to urge you to consider is that in fact, what I'm about to outline
suggests just the opposite. It's a period you can cultivate well if you understand what's

happening in the brain. And when you understand what's happening in the brain, you can
actually build these circuits and make them stronger intentionally.
So it's not a period to just get through. It's actually period to celebrate and cultivate. So
that's a third myth. A fourth myth is that the adolescent period is a period of risk, which is
true. That's not a myth, but only because adolescents are impulsive. And I want to describe
one thing that nature does beyond impulsivity. So early teenage years, it's true.
Adolescents do not have a space between an impulse and an action as much as they will
later on. But here's the story that is kind of shocking as a parent. And for those you who
have younger kids, I don't want to scare you, but this is just the truth. Adolescents are three
times more likely during the period 12 to 24 to be seriously injured or die from preventable
causes. Even though their body is much stronger than any other time, not only stronger in
muscle strength, but if you get an infection, it's better to be an adolescent. You can fight it
better than a kid can, a child, or better than an adult can.
So they have stronger bodies but three times more likely to get seriously hurt or die. Now,
why is that? Part of it is impulsivity. That part is true. But it turns out there's something else
that has been discovered that blew everybody away too. And it has a weird name, but it's
called hyper-rational thinking. And if you think about it this way, hyper-rational thinking is
driven by two processes. One is a limbic process. We talked about the limbic area having an
evaluative system that works.
And the evaluation of the limbic area during adolescence is very different from adulthood
and different from childhood.
And basically nature did this, said, OK, let's say I'm an adolescent who's 19 years old. And
my parents-- and sadly this is a true story, but I'm going to get inside the head of the kid,
which we don't know-- my parents give me a car that's really fun to drive. And I think
driving this car 100 miles an hour down Wilshire Boulevard is going to be really cool.
Now, for me to take the risk of doing that, which on the one hand, you could say, well, if
you're trying to get this kid ready to experience the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, the
uncertain, and the dangerous, to leave home, you got to do something to the brain to get me
to do dangerous things, which is basically true.
If I don't take risks I'm never going to leave home. So I got to take risks. So it takes this
evaluative circuit and says, what's the upside of doing that?, the upside is my friends will
think I'm cool, which is great because I want to have friends, because having friends will
keep me alive. So that's good.

And it'll be really exciting. Because I was playing these video games driving 100 miles an
hour. That was fun. So this car will be just like an elaboration of the video game I was
playing. And what's the downside of that? I could run into somebody. I could get killed. I
could kill somebody. So what happened to me when my son was one, so a long time ago
now, is my favorite professor was pulling out of his house, and he was run over by a 19year-old driving 95 miles an hour on a surface street not far from here. And he was just
killed instantly. And I felt terrible obviously for my professor, for his family, for the whole
field. He was a major figure in our discipline. But for the kid, he's not a bad kid.
He had what was called hyper-rational thinking. He got the idea of driving 100 miles an
hour. He actually planned it. This wasn't impulsive. And he knew about the dangers. This is
the thing, another myth. Adults say, well, adolescents just don't know. Let's just inform
them of the dangers. But actually they know about dangers. Their limbic area just skews the
balance that says, yeah, I know about that. But this would be so much fun. They just don't
care about the danger. So what I suggest in the book, and there are exercises called
mindsight exercises teaching about seeing your own mind clearly or other people's mind, is
if that kid had had an internal compass that wasn't driven by his limbic area and cortical
processing of information but instead and this is now we're just beginning to learn about
this literally there are Parallel Distributed Processors-- PDP processors-- around the
intestine and around the heart. The intrinsic nervous system of the heart and the nervous
system around the intestines are PDP processors. You know about PDP right? So PDP can
process information. It doesn't do it with logical reasoning. It's not a logical formula. But it
has a deep source of wisdom. And what initial findings suggest is that kids who are in touch
with literally what their gut is telling them and what their heart is telling them would
choose not to drive a car that fast. Even though their cortex would say, yeah, that sounds
like a great idea. What's wrong with it?
And their limbic area skew would say, yeah, that sounds cool. 100 miles an hour, you can
do it. You did it in the video game. Why can't you do it in a car? It's the same thing really.
Steering wheel, gas pedal, what's the problem? Your gut would tell you something doesn't
feel right about this. And I am choosing not to do it. Because adolescents have a natural, as
you can see, push against the status quo of adults. So if an adult policeman says, the law is
you have to go 35 miles an hour down Wilshire, or to your parent says, hey, you could have
this car, but don't drive fast. There's a part of an adolescent brain which is literally
programmed from millions of years of evolution to say, I don't care about that.
I know about what they said, but I don't care about it. Even to the point where you probably
know this study, but let's say kids who are going to pick up smoking.
They learn to smoke usually during adolescence. So they figured out, how can we get
adolescents not to smoke? And what did they do? They showed them pictures of graveyards

to scare them and say, look, if you smoke, this is what your lung is going to look like. It's
going to have big holes in it, cancer, black, all this stuff.
No drop in smoking. They said, look, it's not good. It's not even so cool to smoke, no drop
in smoking. So what would you do if you're a creative advertisement person to try to make
adolescents not pick up smoking or if they picked it up stop it? You could have the parents
smoke and they'd say I wouldn't. It's like that. It's just like that, exactly. So they did
something like that. They said, hey, hey, did you know that those really rich adults who
own the cigarette companies know it's going to get your body addicted, and they're stealing
your money and laughing all the way to the bank because they want to get you to be
addicted to this crap? And the kids stopped smoking. They said, I'm not going to let the
adults do that to me.
It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Because they understood the whole thing. Now,
speaking of addiction we've talked about hyper-rational functioning of the cortex and
limbic area. The second reason kids are doing risky behavior is really important to identify,
and it relates to addiction too, is there's a circuit that's distributed up from the brain stem,
the limbic area of the cortex called the reward circuit.
You've probably heard about this because it's in the news a lot. It's driven by a
neurotransmitter. The chemical allows the neurons to communicate with each other called
dopamine.
And what nature has done with the reward circuit is basically some studies suggest dropped
the baseline levels of dopamine and raised the release level. And you could say, why would
you do that? Well, partly the reason to do that is one of the major things that gets dopamine
to be released, which this adolescent would be more driven to because they're kind of bored
because their baseline is low and they want to do something, one of the major things that
releases it is novelty.
Novelty, doing something new gets the dopamine released. So you want to do something
new and create something new, always be challenged. That's fantastic. So that's another
way that nature gets a kid who's now an adolescent to do risky things and feel kind of, let's
see, without trying something. And when parents realize this, and the beautiful thing about
the book is now that it's out, is when parents read this and they have their adolescents read
it, people are going to understand, OK, there's a natural drive to push toward novelty. And
you can do it in a constructive way or just say, oh, that's bad.
And then the adolescent will do things that are really dangerous. So there's a way of
building in healthy novelty exploration. So those are the two ways, hyper-rational cortical
limbic functioning and changes in the dopamine reward circuitry.

Now, sadly, just to make sure we talk about some downsides here, because the dopamine
system is the number one system involved in anything that you can get addicted to, whether
it's video games, or gambling, or high sugar content foods, or cocaine, or heroin, or alcohol,
every single one of those things that you can get addicted to captures your dopamine
circuit. This is why we believe adolescents are absolutely the most vulnerable to become
addicted.
If you're going to become addicted to something in your life, it's most likely to happen
during this period, likely because of this dopamine change.
So we want to try to understand that, not just ignore it, and do something positive to
support it.
So let me summarize all these brain changes in the following four elements. We're going to
look at the upside and downside. And then I want you to think about these four elements.
I'm about to talk about and how they relate to your life now an adult-- because
I'm looking around. I think most people are adults. There may be a couple of adolescents in
the room but also to remember your own adolescence.
OK, so, I'm kind of an acronym addict. So luckily this forms an acronym. And if you had to
ask yourself the question, what is the essence of what
Dan said, or what's the essence of adolescence?
It spells the word essence. So this is useful. So let's review what we just covered.
So this is going to be a review of all this stuff, and it's going to look at the upsides and
downsides of each of these four things.
The first is E-S, Emotional Spark. We've said that the subcortical regions, the body, the
brain stem, and the limbic area, nature has made more active in an adolescent.
And this has the downside with this more motion is that adolescents can be moody. They
can be irritable. As one adolescent told me to write in the book, sometimes we feel one way.
Sometimes we feel another way, and chill out. They want the adults to know not take it so
personally.
These emotions are big, and they're hard. It can be really disorienting to have so many big
emotions going on.
And that's a natural part of evoking motion that nature's created. It isn't a problem unless
we make it a problem.

Now, some kids can get depressed. They can develop all sorts of disorders. In fact, the
pruning process is one reason we believe that all of the major psychiatric disorders like
schizophrenia, or depression, or manic depressive illness have their on set in adolescence,
because the pruning is carving away vulnerable circuits.
We didn't understand that before and now we believe that's the major mechanism.
The good news is we can reverse that in many ways.
So early intervention can be really important. But anyway, the first thing is emotional
spark. What's the upside of that? This is a period where life becomes on fire, and you feel
passionate about something. You really care about something. And this passion fuels a
sense of vitality. And the sad thing is many adolescents get crushed by adults' response at
home and adults' response in school and in society.
And so this is really sad, because then of course you will get demoralized and feel
disempowered and disenfranchised.
So the opportunity, for example here in an organization like Google, is to think about how
to shift the culture of conversation about adolescents.
And it's a huge opportunity to change the way we as a culture approach this period of time.
So E-S, emotional spark. S-E, Social Engagement, the adolescent, as we said, because of
these limbic changes, is driven to be more with peers than their parents.
And that's healthy. That's normal. That's fine.
Adolescents need their peers to survive out in the world. Peer group membership is
important. What's the downside?
If you give up morality for membership, then peer pressure will crush your internal sense of
values. So membership is really important.
Parents need to realize that. So when a kid comes to you and says, I need to go to this party.
Joe and Sammy are all going, and I got to go. I got to go.
You need to understand when your adolescent feels like it's a matter of life and death, that's
from millions of years of evolution that tells them if they're not a member of a group, they
are likely to die.
They're not just making that up. It's not just west Los Angeles culture or something like
that. It's in their genes.

Now, that doesn't mean you need to let them go to the party. Or if they say, I need to wear a
certain well, not these shoes, but certain kind of shoe or I'm not going to fit in, it's a life and
death matter.
That's how it feels.
You can accept the feeling even if you don't purchase the shoe. So that's a really big step in
increasing the communication across the generational divide.
Now, the upside of social engagement is that every research study, every single one on your
medical health, on your mental health, on how long you live and your happiness, without
exception, every single one show that the number one factor is supportive relationships.
You begin to learn to move away from your family and develop these social networks of
support in adolescence.
So these are skills that can last a lifetime and be incredibly positive. So social engagement
is S-E. What's N? So E-S, emotional spark, S-E, social engagement, N is Novelty. Novelty,
as we said, the dopamine system change gets you to try new things. The downside of it, you
can do risky things, and you have unfortunately this increased risk of getting hurt. Right?
What's the upside? The upside is novelty is exciting.
It allows you to be driven to try new things, to do new things, to take risks, to be brave, to
be courageous, to live with this kind of sense of gusto. And that's great. So we have to learn
to manage this novelty-seeking drive. And finally C-E, what is it? C-E is Creative
Explorations.
The creative exploration of the adolescent brain is to try to push against the adult status
quo. And nature has designed this from a large evolutionary point of view for the following
reason. Basically as a child, you're the sponge, soaking in the adult world.
As adults, you figure out what the world is like, and you try to find your niche in it. You go
home. You're tired. You want to collapse. You watch TV, in a modern times. If we did not as
a species have the adolescent period of time, we would never be as adaptive as we are to an
ever-changing world. You need to have a continual source of individuals, children now
turned adolescents, who approach the status quo and say, I don't buy it. I don't buy this. I'm
not going to settle for this. I am going to try to create a new world. I am going to adapt to
the world that's here and make my own world.
So if you think about art, and if you think about music, and if you think about science, and
if you think about technology, you know that all the major innovations primarily come from
adolescent minds.

Now, think about it. That's creative explorations. Now, what's the downside of it? The
downside of creative exploration is as a child, you just say, hey, this is the world I'm being
given. I'm learning to a deal with it, learning to deal with it, fine, fine, fine.
But then when you get to be an adolescent, you go, hey. This world I'm being given, it's
kind of not so good. In fact, it sucks. In fact, I've got to try to change it.
And that's a burden, and it can be disorienting. It can be frightening. So we need to realize,
especially in these days when so much information is being shared, and as you probably
know.
I don't remember the ratios. You can tell me. we get information now in a week, I think it's
a week time, right? that is more information than 100 years ago, people would get in a
lifetime.
I think that's the ratio, something like that. So think about an adolescent who's just
emerging from childhood who was built on the net, right? Who's soaking in all the stuff,
and their brain's being flooded by all the changes that are going on in Somalia, in the
Ukraine, in the whole world. Everything is blowing up, and people are killing each other. I
mean, it is overwhelming. But 100 years ago, it was nothing like that. We have this longer
period of adolescence now, of course, because adolescence used to be a lot shorter, a couple
years. Now it's a dozen years or more.
So we have this long period of adolescence, and what's happening now is adolescence is
being filled with this stuff at a time when they realize they are going to be responsible for
this world and they don't just accept it as is.
So that's the downside. What's the upside? A creative exploration allows us to create a new
world. So what I do when I speak to schools, and I want to have you consider this, is if we
change the cultural conversation around adolescence, two big things can happen.
Number one for adolescents themselves, if we change the way the curriculum addresses this
and now there's a province up in
Canada, a school district here in the United States, and in a couple individual schools in the
US too where we're thinking about making a "Brainstorm" approach to middle school and
do for a younger child, you would say, let's build on the emotional spark, the passion, and
have kids approach, let's say, the world's problems of what they feel really compelled to
really try to improve.
Famine, violence, climate change, then I say, OK, then what would you do with social
engagement? That's the emotional spark piece.

The social engagements, instead of having to compete with each other, where you say, hey,
do the best on the spelling bee. Get the best grades. Get the best SAT scores so you can get
in the best college so you can get in the best graveyard.
That's basically what we're telling them really. But instead, we are a collaborative species.
And not much is done in school to build on our collaborative nature that's inherent to
adolescents.
So what if you say, OK, instead of competing with each other, if you have a competitive
streak that's beautiful, let's compete with the world's problems. And let's get together in
groups of collaborative nature where we know from studies collective intelligence rises
above individual intelligence every time.
So let's have you actually build with each other so that when you beat the competition,
everybody wins. That's the kind of setup which would be win-win. And I'll bet you that
when you allow the adolescent mind that moves towards novelty and has creative
explorations built into these millions of years of evolution, I'll bet you you're going to find
solutions to some of these world problems that we adults have never been able to solve.
These are some of the world's most pressing problems, and there's an untapped resource of
incredible creativity and courage. So that's for the adolescents. It's an incredible opportunity
to empower them.
And in the "Brainstorm" book, I have these mindsight exercises that allow the adolescent or
the adult reading the book to actually build the integrative fibers of the brain than are the
basis of well-being, emotional intelligence, and also the basis of innovation that they can
actually build them. So that's for the adolescent. The final thing I want to say is think about
it for your own life.
How many people do you know as adults who made it through adolescence but they lost
their essence? They lost their emotional spark. They've lost social support, social
engagement. They don't do new things in their life, and they aren't creatively challenging
their mind with creative exploration.
And they've lost the essence of living a vital life. When I was writing this up, I went, oh my
gosh, because I'm very familiar with a field called neuroplasticity, which is how we as
adults keep our brain continually growing strong throughout the lifespan.
And in a book called "Mindsight" I show you how you do that even with someone in their
90s. So we know that for sure. What you do in your mind can keep your brain strong. If you
had to pick the top four aspects of life that will keep your brain growing strong and even
being integrated, it would be emotional spark. Keep passion in your life for what you do.
Social engagements, keep your social connections, the network of support really strong.

Novelty, give your brain new things it does. Try new activities. And creative explorations,
challenge your mind in ways that are not just the status quo but really keep you pushing the
boundaries.
Emotional spark, social engagement, novelty, creative explorations, exactly what we need
as adults too. And then I realized, wow, maybe some adults I've seen over these 25 years of
being in practice, maybe they're angry at their adolescents.
Outside of their awareness but deep in their hearts, they know this adolescent has an
essence that they themselves have lost.
So what I say to the adult very gingerly who's also reading the book so they won't just toss
it in the trash can, I say, look, if this essence is something you would like to get back, if you
follow these exercises too, you can get it back too.
It's never too late to revive your essence. I know for a fact you can take someone even in
their 90s and revive it. And so when we do this then, the exciting thing is everybody wins.
You improve the relationship between adults and adolescents. You'll tap into an incredible
resource of innovation, courage, and creativity in the adolescent group.
You'll allow the adult who's lost their essence to get really revived.
And so everybody wins. So the exciting thing is getting this change in the cultural
conversation for adolescents and adults out in the world.
And the great news is if we do that, there's this incredible opportunity to actually make this
world a better place for all of us to live.
So thank you so much for your attention, and we have time for discussion. Thank you.
Audience: you talked about pruning and then the myelin growth stage. Do you know when
those two stages tend to occur?
Daniel Siegel: yeah, they're a little different male and female. So female starts about a year
and a half sooner than males. And when you watch the path, they happen differently.
But basically, it's the first few years is a lot of pruning, and the pruning sort of comes down.
And then the myelination, which is the white matter or the brain, is increasing later on.
So if you saw a graph, it would be kind of overlapping like that. So the first two, three, four
years, a lot, a lot of pruning. And then you see the following years a lot of myelination.
And the myelination goes on into the 20s. Now, here's the thing. This is sort of a myth, but
it's just a misconception. People say, oh, the prefrontal cortex is just immature. That's why

adolescents are immature. And I really think we should stop using the word immature.
Because immature applies you are one place only because you're getting ready to go
somewhere else.
I think the adolescent period is a period where you're basically growing these integrative
fibers throughout the brain.
And so the brain is becoming more integrated. And the prefrontal cortex is like a profound
integrative area that's just making sure all the other regions that are growing. So you really
have to look at specific areas, and they're a little different male and female. But if you look
at the graph, you can see it that way. And I can refer you to some papers.
Audience: And one follow-up based on that is should you be doing something different as a
parent during those different stages? Or do you kind of consider that all part of
adolescence?
Daniel Siegel: You mean pruning and myelination?
Audience: yeah.
Daniel Siegel: well, they go together. But here's the way i would think about it. I would
think that, and what I would say to the adolescent as a parent of an adolescent is, it's a use it
or lose it principle. So I'd say to a kid who's into music, if you really like music and you're
12, 13 years old, pruning happens. And basically nature is going to say, if you're not using a
certain circuit, dump it.
You don't need it. So this period of adolescence, I say to my adolescents, is, if you really
like music, just exposure yourself to a lot of music. Play a lot of music. Do music. That's
great. Do it. Because this is the time your brain is going to be specializing. I would let them
know that. Same thing with athletics, same thing with anything. That's a good time to do
something.
The myelinating is by practice, you actually lay down myelin. And so I would just say that
and then back off. So it isn't like you say, you should be doing this. You should say, this is
information you should have, and you make your decision. That's a very different thing
than saying, let's avoid pruning. Let's avoid, every morning. And some adolescents have
told me they're a little worried about the pruning.
And so you want to say, you can use your mind to keep those circuits going. Yeah.
Audience: I find it fascinating about the PDP process in your heart or gut. In that sense,
you mentioned the example the adolescents are actually know from those part that the
danger, the risk.
Daniel Siegel: Yes.

Audience: so what's the practical implication?

Daniel siegel: So the practical thing is this yes, very good.
So you have your intestines, and you have your heart. And they're going to process
information. There is a pathway from these PDP processors up lamina 1, layer one of the
spinal cord, and up the 10th cranial nerve, the vagus nerve.
You don't need to remember. If you want to know those details, they're there. But anyway,
they're basically very limited pathways that come up.
They come up into the brain to a very specific area called the anterior insula and the
anterior cingulate. For most people, the way you get the processing that goes on there into
the part of the brain, this cortex that's going to make ultimate decisions, go, no go. Do I do
it? Do I not do it? Let's say for the driving, you can have the processing going on.
But the pathway to this prefrontal decision-making circuit is not well developed. So even
though their gut would be processing don't do it, their cortex would never receive the
signal. So in the book, I teach exercises where we know how to increase the anterior insula
activity and size. And I put them in the book. Literally we now know. This is the amazing
thing. we now know if you do this exercise, you will stimulate the I call it SNAG
Stimulate Neuronal Activity Growth. You're going to SNAG the anterior insula so that
when you stimulate to grow studies show it will not only fire. You get it to fire. Neurons
which fire together wire together is the fun statement. And you get it to grow.
Then that kid we need to do the studies, but this is what I suggest in the book because all
the research points in this direction is that the person who has that kind of mindfulness, that
kind of reflection, that kind of interception is what it's called, they will allow the wisdom of
the body to influence the cortical circuits of decision. Does that make sense? So you're
basically strengthening I don't know if the computer analogy, you're strengthening the PDP
processing in one region that's geographically separate from another. And you're laying
down the cables and so that it reaches the ultimate decision, because this doesn't make
decisions. This makes decisions what the body is going to do.
This doesn't do that. So we want to have this have literally and what I teach the adolescent
reading is I say, this is how it works. Your cortex is vulnerable because it's hyper-rational.
You want to let your own wisdom, not your parents' rules, not the law, because of course
you're pushing against those. You want to let your own wisdom be your guide.
I call that an internal compass. That's how you develop it.
Audience: I'm curious what you were saying about the drastic link-

Dan: Come right up to the mic so we can hear. Curious about the drastic lengthening of the
adolescence period. You were saying it used to be a couple years, and now it's like a dozen
years. I assume that cultural factors would have a big part of that. But adolescence, as
you're defining it, is really biological processes. So what are the interactions there?
DANIEL SIEGEL: Yeah, it's a great question. So let me just lay out the facts as we know
them.
The external marker that we use from let's say 150 years ago is the onset of puberty. So
puberty had its onset around 15 or 16 years of age 150 years ago across many cultures.
And for girls, it was about a year, year and a half before boys. So there's a little bit different
male female difference. And then girls would actually get married and settled down around
two years later in terms of raising a family. And boys would be maybe two or three years
later. So for a female, the adolescent period was about two years. For males, about 3 1/2, 4
years. That was basically 150 years ago. What has changed now is that puberty just as a
marker, rough marker, has come from 15 or 16 down. And now some girls are having the
beginning of their menstrual cycle around 11, 10, some even 9 for reasons we don't
understand. It looks like it's related to nutrition.
Boys it's coming down early about a year and a half later in terms of development of sexual
maturation. And roughly, it's not exactly the same because you can have someone delay
puberty who actually has started adolescence in the brain. This is why we know they're not
exactly the same thing. But as a rough estimate, then this stretch then where now you have
people starting the adolescent period around 12, more or less, they're not assuming adult
responsibilities. And also the brain is remodeling way into the mid-20s.
So this is definitely culturally dependent. If we could do these same scans on people from
Papua New Guinea, maybe they'd have a two-year period. We'd have to look at that. There's
a center that we've been running for 10 years called the Center for Culture, Brain, and
Development.
And just to respond to your really important big question, culture shapes the timing of brain
development. But the periods that we go through seem to be biologically built in. The
question is their onset and their offset may be culturally determined.
AUDIENCE: So it's almost like the adult responsibilities kind of clamps down on this
process and terminates it.
DANIEL SIEGEL: Well, that would be the interesting thing to study subcultures where
people do settle down, get married.
And we don't have enough brain scans to see yet.

Absolutely, that may be what happens. And of course what we know is that it's a cyclical
thing. What I write about, which gets people very interested in this whole thing, is that the
mind is not just about brain activity. It's about what happens in a culture too, like what's
shaped by our information sharing in the internet, for example, and what's shaped across
media and stuff like that. So mental processes are both cultural, that is they're relational,
how we share information.
And they're embodied. They're what's happening throughout the whole body. So when you
look at it that way and the developing mind kind of explorers this, then you realize, half of
the story is the body.
The other half is our relational world of information sharing. And so they influence each
other. Yes, and we can do one more question?
Yeah, great
There's a book I read a while back called "Hold Onto Your Kids" by Gabor Mate.
SIEGEL: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Are you familiar with it?
DANIEL SIEGEL: I know Gabor, yeah, yes, I'm familiar with it.
AUDIENCE: So the basic premise I took away from that was that the attachment of
adolescents to peers should not be encouraged but really redirected to the parents instead,
where as you seem to say that peer attachment is actually the norm and actually desirable
for adolescents.
And how do you feel that parents should approach this?
DANIEL SIEGEL: Yes, thank you for pointing that out.So first of all, what happens in
modern culture is-- and there's a very important question you were raising is that
adolescents have a natural push away.
In all cultures we've been able to study, so in our center, the Center for Culture, Brain, and
Development at UCLA, we looked at all cultures that have been studied. And every culture
has an adolescent period where the adolescents push against adults. Now, it could be in
subtle ways like if you're in a society where they're weaving from the top down, well,
you're going to weave from the bottom up. That's your so-called pushing away. But in every
society we're able to study, there's a push away. Now, in most societies except ours, there
are non-parental adults who serve important mentor relationships guiding the development
of adolescents. That's extremely important. But it's not the prent. So where I would disagree
the Gabor, and we had a talk about this recently at a meeting up in British Columbia, I don't
agree that it's unhealthy, as he points out, for adolescents to push away from their parents. I

don't agree with that at all. What I do agree with is the sentiment that adolescents should be
launched into the world without any adult involved with them.
The challenge we have in this culture, as you've seen from what happened at Penn State and
what happens in some religious organizations, is when you get a non-family member adult,
sometimes even a family member, involved that's not a parent involved in an adolescent's
life, there's abuse that goes on. So understandably, we as parents are very concerned about
when you see an adult starting to take on a mentor role with an adolescent boy or girl. So I
don't have an easy answer to this. But the general issue is adolescents need each other. They
need to have attachment with each other.
It's extremely important for their development. And if you look at the work of Susan Harter,
H-A-R-T-E-R, I think the research absolutely bears that out.
They should be becoming attached to each other. It's a natural part of millions of years of
evolution that that's a natural thing, Should they push away completely from adults, their
parents including?
Not at all, so that I agree with Gabor for sure they shouldn't push away completely. So the
balance would be how we as a society can figure out how do you have some kind of
institutionalized mentor program where you have non-parental adults who are an active part
of the essence of adolescence supporting and adolescent's growth? So I think we need to get
our minds all together saying, how are we going to invent this, minimizing the risks.
Because abuse is a serious risk, I mean, just look at what would happen in these things I'm
talking about. We need to do it in a safe way, but we absolutely need it, because our culture
basically lacks it.
And in that sense, it's really true. We need to keep adults involved in adolescents' lives but
also support them in having attachments with each other. Does that make sense?
Yeah, good, thank you. I have one final question.
This is Google, and outliers are kind of the norm here, so I would like to ask
DANIEL SIEGEL: That's why I feel so at home at Google.
This onset at 12 and ending at 24, what's the variability on that?
DANIEL SIEGEL: Yeah, so first of all, saying it ends at 24 is an estimate of when the
remodeling generally seems to come to some kind of completion. But the brain continues to
change throughout the lifespan.
So what I would say is this. I would say adults who can hold onto their adolescent essence
are going to live the most vital kind of life.

And if you mean by an outlier that you're kind of thinking outside the box, and pushing the
limit of things, and all that's a part of adolescent creative explorations and novelty, that's a
beautiful thing. And so the number 24 doesn't mean adolescence should end. So a lot of
these talks, people come to me, I think I'm still adolescent. I go, good for you.
So seriously, I mean, it's a funny thing. The word adolescence has in some connotations a
negative spin, like, oh, you're just adolescent.
What I hope we can do literally we as a society is change the cultural conversation where
you realize the essence of adolescence is actually the essence of adulthood.
And we shouldn't let it go. And we should support people who make the outliers really be
filled with inspiration for everyone.
Thank you. Maybe the natural follow-up question is, do you have people come up to you
and say, my spouse is an adolescent, and what can I do about that?
DANIEL SIEGEL: Yes, I do.
But that could be a lot of fun.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, and we'll continue the conversation outside, have book signing.
Thank you.
DANIEL SIEGEL: Thank you.