Why you should adore your teen

Why you should adore your teen

Research shows that the adolescent brain has a torrid time re-arranging itself

It's hard to deal with teenagers given that they are moody, rude and withdrawn. But give a thought to what is happening inside their head.

The teenage brain deconstructs, it literally falls apart. Then their brain has the difficult job of re-arranging itself, reconstructing, and that can take a long time, sometimes not coming together until the age of 18 or 20.

The teenage brain does its best to get itself in ship shape, but the cortex, the decision-making centres and the centres that control emotions take years to start performing and that accounts for a lot of confusion about feelings, relationships and authority felt by all teenagers.

This is all against a background of brand new cells that start growing deep in a youngster's brain, which make them want to reach out to other teens. Even if they're not friendly to you, they are to their mates. Socially, they want to begin forming friendships and indulge in mild flirtations. It used to be thought we were born with all the brain cells we'd ever have, but under certain circumstances we can grow new ones. Exercising will grow new brain cells, which is why it is good for the ageing brain. Teenage hormones can switch on this kind of growth too, particularly in the amygdala, an area that is buried deep in the brain, which processes emotions. Researchers at Michigan State University in the US, have confirmed that these new cells help the teenage brain navigate the choppy waters of puberty and sail into the calmer waters of adulthood. The interesting aspect of this is that these cells play an important role in what you might call mating behaviour. And how do scientists know this? Researchers injected male hamsters with a chemical marker to show brain cell birth during puberty. When the hamsters matured into adults, the researchers allowed them to interact and mate with females.

Examining the brains immediately after that mating, they found that the new cells formed during puberty had been incorporated into the amygdala. They had persisted in adults.

Some of the new cells contain a protein that told the researchers that those cells had become part of the adult networks involved in social and sexual behaviour.

Before this study, it was unclear if cells born during puberty even survived into adulthood. The research shows that they can mature to become part of the brain circuitry that defines adult behaviour
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