Teenagers are invincible.

A teenage brain:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/anatomy.html

And after the picture, the words:

teen brain

Surprise: It grows long past childhood. So chalk up some of that baffling behavior to neurobiology, not hormones.

By Tim Wendel

Until scientists began to employ MRI imaging a few years ago, the teenage brain was thought to be largely finished. After all, brain size usually doesn't change that much after childhood. Many assumed it only required fine-tuning in preparation for adulthood.

"Now we're finding out how wrong we were," says Richard Restak, a neuropsychiatrist and author of "The Secret Life of the Brain". "The teenage brain is a work in progress that we're only beginning to understand."

From the thickening and then thinning of gray matter to the development of the all-important frontal lobes, the brain undergoes dramatic change during adolescence. What parents once blamed on hormones is actually "a grand upheaval of the brain," says Barbara Strauch, a medical science editor and author of "The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids".

This upheaval affects everything from schoolwork and sleep patterns to teens' propensity for taking risks.

Risk-taking: Blame immature frontal lobes

All parents want their children to explore the world. But what if the family curfew has become a joke? What if a teenager exhibits behavior that not only worries an adult but also can be dangerous to the kid?

Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says a desire for thrills and taking risks is a building block of adolescence. The frontal lobes help put the brakes on such behavior, but they're also one of the last areas of the brain to develop fully. Located right behind the forehead, the frontal lobes actually grow larger than adult size in puberty. But the process is far from complete; refinement of the frontal lobes can continue into the early 20s.

"This is a crucial stage of development," says Mel Levine, director of the University of North Carolina's clinical center for the study of development and learning, "because the frontal lobes enable a person to know where they're heading as opposed to having no idea of what the consequences will be."

In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Dahl calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. The frontal lobes cannot cope.

Dahl points out that studies are far from complete, but he and other experts contend that higher levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine make teens hungry for stimulation, including risky behavior.

Academics: "Wow! It suddenly makes sense"

Besides the frontal lobes, other key areas of the brain are transformed during adolescence. The corpus callosum, a thick bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain, enlarges. The anterior cingulate gyrus, which helps us stay focused, matures, as do key areas in the cerebral cortex that recently have been linked to language development and spatial reasoning. Such development may explain why things will suddenly click for a struggling geometry student: The brain finally can make sense of the subject material.

Several experts contend that music, math and sports can help structure the brain faster and better than simply hanging out or watching television. "The adolescent brain exhibits a tremendous plasticity," Restak says. "Indeed, the adolescent's choices determine the quality of his brain."

Time: Teens really do need extra sleep

But even the best choices, inside or outside of the classroom, will do little good if a teen is too tired. Levine recommends that parents set up a daily schedule at home and stick to it. Instead of telling a teen he can watch television after he does his homework, try saying, "First, spend two hours every evening on brain work. After that, you can watch TV."

Early research indicates that too many timed deadlines, at school or at home, reward impulsive behavior and do little to accentuate the frontal lobes and develop other crucial areas of the teen brain.

Melatonin, an important brain chemical, can wreak havoc in an adolescent's world. Melatonin helps make us drowsy, and in teens it's secreted later at night. Sleep specialist Mary Carskadon, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, says such changes in melatonin production push teens to stay up later. Her surveys and field studies show that teens average 7 1/2 hours of sleep a night. She maintains that for brain development, nine hours should be the goal.

"Most teens are very sleep-deprived," Carskadon says. "That's when problems in the development of the frontal cortex and many of those synapses emerge. We are only now learning about the [effect] of sleep on learning and memory. And what's more important during adolescence than learning and memory?"

Parents: You can help new brain cells connect

In childhood, brain cells grow quickly, like new stalks on a plant. As adolescence accelerates, there's an overabundance of new connections in the brain. As teens mature, some connections are pruned away, increasing the brain's efficiency. The chance to help shape this pruning makes parents more crucial, not less.

"This is a sensitive time, when feelings are becoming linked with rational thought," Dahl says. "The stakes are very high, and parents need to feel that it's OK to be monitoring what their adolescents are doing."

When Strauch was researching her book, Primal Teen, she often brought her two teens along. As a result, she found herself more empathic.

"There's so much going in the brain, and it should give us hope," she says. "We should not really give up on any kid. They may be sitting in a lump and sleeping until noon and have pink hair, but there are all kinds of changes going on under that pink hair."

Tim Wendel, the father of one teenager, is the author of "The New Face of Baseball", a look at 100 years of Latino baseball players, to be published next month by HarperCollins.

http://www.usaweekend.com/03_issues/030518/030518teenbrain.html

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I think it's mostly because the lack of first-hand experience and thinking "nothing bad has ever happened to me, so why should it start now?"

At least that's what I thought and, after thinking about it more, I decided I'm vincible :wink: after all.

Yay, I do need my 9 hours of sleep.

I think you're right. But when you were a teenager, the times you were told "you think you're invincible", did you ever not even think that. Sometimes you may have wieghed the risks and parents were being irrational. Where do we draw the line?

I don't think the term is used in a literal sense.

Teens (and I'm speaking in general terms here) tend to do a lot of things on impulse or by peer pressure without considering all of the possible implications. Many of those things they do can easily end up with either them or their friends being dead (I'm amazed that I ever managed to survive my own teenage years! :p ).

Yuyp. Sometimes it is the parent that is being irrational. I'd have to guess that that is a small minority of the times though. Teens tend to greatly underestimate the danger they create and overestimate their capabilities. That's not a knock on teens. It's just the way it is. Maturity tends to temper boths ends of the spectrum.

I remember smiling and shaking my head in the affirmative when accused of thinking I was invincible as a teen. It would appear I was right too... :wink: I crashed everything with two wheels I ever had… most more than once, rolled a car end over end after a 184 ft. jump, my friends and I treated a declared snow-emergency as a command to get hammered on the road… and I never even broke a bone. Sometimes I think you're invincible as long as your courage tells you so. Pity we have to grow up.

Invincible and immortal. They also heal faster. That's why old men send young men to war. When they come back, they know better, they are no longer young, and they send young men to war

So it is decided that teenagers really do feel invincible?

i dunno i dont feeel invicible i just dont feel old and i think thats where the difference lies

i'm 17 and when i wake up i'm never achey
i hardly ever have hangovers
i'm dont as get random pains
its not that i feel invincible but for me life is short iwanna cram as much as i can into it just to be able to look back and say i did that
that was me (or even just think to myself wow i have had a really good life)

so screw i think your as old as you feel
u work hard u play hard and i dont think many will argue with that

Teenagers are just naive. I say this as a 16 year old :wink:

Being around nearly 3,000 peers every day can be very convincing that the fate of our world is in extremely, extremely dangerous hands. Kids are stupid, they're irresponsible, they're disrespectful, they're full of hormones. All this typically leads to some sort of attitude of immortality on a lot of issues.

I try not to be that way, but sometimes it's inevitable. We all make mistakes; but I do think that the blunt of 'ignorance' lies in teenagers. We're just too arrogant to take a breath and look around us sometimes.

I'm 28 and still feel this way.

Re: Teenagers are invincible.


At the moment I don't I feel incivible (actually far form it!)...in fact I am always cautious of life and what could happen next. Perhaps I should calm down more though...but that's just my opinion, although I'm sure that lots of teenagers do not feel invincible...we're not all the same, so I can't speak for those that fit the description of 'feeling immortal'...

Re: Teenagers are invincible.


I remember a vibrant physical aspect to being a teenager. I was much lighter back then, and much stronger proportionally (to my body weight). My endurance was almost endless and my recovery time after extreme effort minimal. I could play tennis eight hours per day, run up a staircase four steps at a time, and climb hand over hand up a rope without using my legs. Climbing a tree was easy, and a fifteen foot drop didn't seem like too much to handle.

One reason I think that Spiderman was such an enduring comic book character is that he embodied what it feels like to be a healthy teenage boy (at least for me).

In addition to all this, the proportion of kids lives that they've lived is very small compared to their projected lifespan, and time seems very long to the young, which makes the inevitible seem blissfully far away. Some are more cautious, but many are swept up in their youth (lucky them

Thanks for the memories

Oh yeah. When I was a teenager I thought I caould do anything. In fact, I'm surprised I made it out alive, lol.

If only teenagers had some REAL, constructive, important functions in western societies! Some creative outlet for all that energy & idealism. We treat them like children for far too long. That's the problem.

msolga--

You are absolutely right. A good bit of teenage devilment is caused by idle hands and empty time.

Teenagers should be treated like apprentice adults rather than old children.

That's a really really good point. Imagine the possiblilties. . .

I, a teenager, can say based upon my experience is that conciously I do not feel no where near invincible. However, I can't help but feel "Invincisble" (subcon.). I guess you can say naievte or just plain "ego-centric." I too am confounded.

My guess is that, I haven't "matured" yet. The brain, etc...

I'm 15, and I certainly don't feel invincible -- quite the opposite.
I think adults have this preconcieved idea that teens are apt to do stupid and thoughtless things because of peer pressure, etc, but I think honestly if you asked most teens, that wouldn't be the case.