Obviously, who suffers the most with air pollution & its related illnesses: the poor. And thanks to the government's cutting of the healthcare budgets, those poor can't even get proper healthcare. It's like a double whammy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the US Clean Air Act’s passage in the 1970s, there have been a steady stream of reports correlating exposure to air pollutants with a variety of health impacts. But in the early days, much of that information was too rudimentary to be of much use. Monitoring technology has improved in the decades since, & state air-quality boards have amassed volumes of actionable data about air pollution.
The increase in available data coupled with advances in chemistry & 3D modeling over the past few years has enabled scientists to identify new particle systems within air pollution. Researchers are now able to determine all the various chemicals & particles that air pollution includes, & to study precisely how these various elements interact with, & in some cases fundamentally change, the human body.
Those advances have led to a rapid increase in published studies about air pollution over the past year, as researchers have focused their work on the interaction between pollution particles & human health. Multiple long-term studies of human health are beginning to produce results, as are ongoing studies of air pollution. 3 studies published just last week illustrate the state of rapidly advancing science around air pollution today.
In one study, Louisiana State University researcher Stephania Cormier reported that a particular type of free radicals (called environmentally persistent free radicals, or EPFRs), formed within the particulate matter emitted by cooking stoves, cars, factories, waste incinerators, wood fires, & cigarettes, can damage human cells.
The findings could have broad implications for businesses, considering that the Supreme Court is currently wrestling with how to interpret the Clean Air Act.
Cormier & her team divided a population of mice into 2 groups, exposing one to EPFRs & the other to no pollution. They then infected both groups with a flu virus.
The pollution-exposed mice were rendered virtually defenseless to the virus: 20% more of them died from the flu. Instead of fighting off the disease, their bodies reacted by triggering an anti-inflammatory signal, Interleukin-10, & switching on both an immune-regulating protein called aryl hydrocarbon receptor & immune cells called regulatory T cells, both of which turn off the body’s defenses against infection.
The researchers also found that the EPFRs caused oxidative stress, an imbalance between the production of free radicals & the ability of the body to counteract or detoxify their harmful effects.
What that means for similarly exposed communities is that asthma & the flu will be more severe for vulnerable members, like infants & the elderly.
More & worse allergies
Another study, published on 22 March by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, found that common traffic-related air pollutants may make allergies more severe.
The study’s authors conducted lab tests & computer simulations to study the effect of ozone & nitrogen dioxide on a primary birch pollen, Bet v1, & found that both pollutants affected how proteins in the pollen bound together, potentially creating a more potent allergen.
“Our research is showing that chemical modifications of allergenic proteins may play an important role in the increasing prevalence of allergies worldwide,” Christopher Kampf, one of the study’s authors, said in a statement.
Impact on the brain
Yet another study released last week, this one a collaborative effort between researchers at the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles & at Columbia University’s Center for Children’s Environmental Health, found a connection between common pollutants found in a wide range of emissions & cognitive & behavioral impairment.
The study looked at the effects of airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), a molecule prevalent in emissions from motor vehicles, oil & coal burning, wildfires & agricultural burning, hazardous waste sites, & tobacco smoke as well as charred foods.
The research team selected 40 minority youth, born to Latina or African American women, that Columbia researchers have been following from birth, & used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure their brains.
The Columbia researchers had previously reported that PAH exposure during gestation in this group was associated with multiple neurodevelopmental disturbances, including development delay by age 3, reduced verbal IQ at age 5, & symptoms of anxiety & depression at age 7.
In the group of 40 studied in the MRI test, the researchers found a loss of the brain’s white matter surface, which correlates to slower processing of information & severe behavioral problems, including ADHD & aggression.
Postnatal PAH exposure – measured at age 5 – was found to contribute to additional disturbances in development of white matter in a separate area of the brain, one associated with concentration, reasoning, judgment, & problem-solving ability.
“This sample of 40 was quite ‘pure,’ in that their exposure to other known neurotoxicants was minimal, so we have more confidence in being able to attribute the brain abnormalities to the effects of prenatal & early childhood exposure to PAH,” Peterson said.
While the study group was small, Peterson said these results emphasize what we already know about the harmful effects of tobacco & add to the growing base of knowledge about the impacts of other sources of air pollution. Given the mounting evidence, he said, clinicians should educate prospective parents about these risks, especially in early pregnancy.
Peterson said that in less urban areas, exposure to pollutants from wildfires, agricultural burning & hazardous waste sites might be more relevant, & that women & children should remain indoors & use air conditioners as much as possible to avoid the airborne products of these fires.
“As the link between air-borne pollutants & adverse brain changes is linear & seems not to have any threshold that defines safe & unsafe exposure, any reduction in exposure during the most active periods of brain development – in fetal life & in early childhood – will be helpful.”
Translating research into action
According to the most recent American Lung Association State of the Air report, more than half of Americans live in areas with dangerously high levels of air pollution.
Children are the most severely impacted by air pollution, both in utero & in early childhood.
Air pollution also remains an issue of class & race. The dominant sources of pollution – traffic, industrial emissions, energy-related emissions (from oil refineries & coal plants), & hazardous waste – all disproportionately affect low-income & minority communities.
The quickest way to improve the air quality of all communities is increased state & federal regulation of the sources of air pollution. To that end, the US Supreme Court is due to address 2 major Environmental Protection Agency rules this summer, one that aims to regulate cross-state air pollution & one that would require better pollution controls on coal power plants.
Both have been criticized for being expensive & onerous to implement, but Supreme Court justices in favor of the rules have pointed to the EPA’s obligation to protect public health, not private profits.
Judge Judith W Rogers wrote as much in the majority opinion on the EPA’s mercury rule, which would require coal power plants to install scrubbers that would limit mercury emissions, costing them $9.6bn a year. Rogers said the EPA’s focus on “factors relating to public health hazards, & not industry’s objections that emission controls are costly” should motivate Congress to make appropriate & necessary regulatory rules.
Moreover, because the scrubbers required would also reduce other air pollutants, the EPA has estimated that the rule would save $26bn to $89bn per year in healthcare costs. The latest batch of air pollution research helps support that claim.
Breastfeeding an infant, a practice, which has been going on since humans came on this planet, through creation or evolution (regardless of what you believe), is still the best possible practice to get an infant the essential nutrients, in that early stage of life.
Regardless of how much the world develops & how much Nestle or other companies try to sell infant formula, they still cannot replace the value of nutrition an infant receives from breast milk.
Furthermore, the breast milk is an affordable (read: free) source of nutrition for the infant. Many babies around the world die because of malnutrition or water-borne diseases, because of these formulas. How?
Mothers, in rural areas of developing nations, are given free samples of Nestle's infant formula in the beginning (these companies want to hook these mothers for life on formulas). Since, clean water is scarce in those areas, mothers use dirty water, & essentially, kill their newborn with their own hands.
Also, since biologically, if the mother's breasts are not used by the infant in those early days after birth, they dry up. After those free samples are gone, mothers are required to buy the formula. Those women don't have enough finances to purchase those relatively expensive formulas. So, those babies suffer malnutrition in their early days of growth, which in turn, inhibit their growth, or may even kill them.
On top of that, Islam teaches people that breastfeeding creates a very strong bond of love between a mother & her baby. We can see nowadays that many career women, especially the ones who are very busy in their careers, don't opt for breastfeeding. Heck, they may not even go for the whole pregnancy drama & just hire a surrogate. What happens when those kids grow up? Mothers don't know what their kids are doing & how they are growing up etc. Kids return that non-existent love by also not caring about their mothers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The research in Brazil traced nearly 3,500 babies, from all walks of life, & found those who had been breastfed for longer went on to score higher on IQ tests as adults.
Experts say the results, while not conclusive, appear to back current advice that babies should be exclusively breastfed for 6 months.
But they say mothers should still have a choice about whether or not to do it.
Regarding the findings - published in The Lancet Global Health - they stress there are many different factors other than breastfeeding that could have an impact on intelligence, although the researchers did try to rule out the main confounders, such as mother's education, family income & birth weight.
Dr. Bernardo Lessa Horta, from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said his study offers a unique insight because in the population he studied, breastfeeding was evenly distributed across social class - not something just practised by the rich & educated.
Most of the babies, irrespective of social class, were breastfed - some for less than a month and others for more than a year.
Those who were breastfed for longer scored higher on measures of intelligence as adults.
They were also more likely to earn a higher wage & to have completed more schooling.
Dr. Horta believes breast milk may offer an advantage because it is a good source of long-chain saturated fatty acids which are essential for brain development.
Kevin Fenton, national director of health & wellbeing, Public Health England, said there was strong evidence that breastfeeding provides some health benefits for babies - reduced respiratory & gastrointestinal infections in infancy, for example.
He said: "PHE's advice remains that exclusive breastfeeding for around the first 6 months of life provides health benefits to babies.
"We recognise however, that not all mothers choose, or are able, to breastfeed & infant formula is the only alternative to breast milk for babies under 12 months old."
Dr Colin Michie, chairman of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health's nutrition committee, said: "There have been many studies on the link between breastfeeding & IQ over the years with many having had their validity challenged.
"This study however, looks at a number of other factors including education achievement & income at age 30 which, along with the high sample size, makes this study a very powerful one.
"It is important to note that breastfeeding is one of many factors that can contribute to a child's outcomes, however this study emphasises the need for continued & enhanced breastfeeding promotion so expectant mothers are aware of the benefits of breastfeeding."
A great piece. Most adults, I see now, who grew up doing mountains of homework, me included, never grew their love of learning & curiosity. So, as soon as, exams are over, books are donated, recycled, or thrown in the dumpster.
Homework becomes an evil monster of some sort. It bothers not only kids but takes away precious time of their parents, too, who may want to spend that time in educating their kids the world outside of books.
Furthermore, all this homework & learning is not raising an educated populace who rationally think of the consequences of their actions in all spheres of all their life. Evidence is right in this article that parents are fighting the school that why their kid is not getting homework. That kid is in elementary school. The history & current evidence is showing that homework is not really helping anyone learn anything, except frustrating parents & their children, alike.
Parents, who themselves grew with mountains of homework, want their kids to do mountains of homework, too, without rationally thinking, how is it helping their own kids become educated. Their success in life is not dependent on how they did their homework in Grade 1. It depends on what & how they do in university. And even at university levels, homework is becoming more about reading & understanding the material & actively discussing it with their peers, not filling out pages & pages with exercises & diagrams.
Disclaimer: I'm not discussing education reform, because even universities are not great in igniting the love of learning in people. They are experts in molding people in a certain way.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A New York City elementary school’s decision to ban homework in favour of play has infuriated some parents.
Many people seem to believe that working on assignments after school is an essential part of a child’s success. But if you actually do your homework on homework, evidence suggests its benefits are negligible at best. Given what we know about kids’ sedentary lifestyles, of course we should ditch homework for play.
“The topic of homework has received a lot of attention lately, & the negative effects of homework have been well established,” the school’s principal, Jane Hsu, wrote in a letter that was sent home with students last month, reports DNAinfo.com.
“They include: children’s frustration & exhaustion, lack of time for other activities & family time &, sadly for many, loss of interest in learning.”
Instead of working on essays or math problems at home, students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade are encouraged to read & spend time with their families, the principal said.
The new policy was prompted by the fact that too many children had to sit out recess because they failed to hand in homework assignments.
A committee the school established a year ago to investigate the problem concluded there is “no link between elementary school homework & success in school.”
Ultimately, therefore, it would be better to have kids running around at recess & after dinner playing hockey, or basketball, or tag, or whatever activity it might be.
But some parents are so upset they are threatening to pull their kids from the school.
“I think they should have homework. Some of it is about discipline. I want [my daughter] to have fun, but I also want her to be working towards a goal,” Daniel Tasman, the father of a second-grader at the school, told DNAinfo. He is now looking for another school.
“I was just thinking maybe I’ll keep my daughter here for another year, but this pushed me over the edge,” he said.
Over the past few years, a movement has emerged that is questioning homework. Parents are sick of having to help kids complete mountains of assignments.
“If one thing happens in 2015, it should be a concerted campaign to eradicate this illogical, damaging, ass-paining institution once and for all,” novelist Caitlin Moran wrote in The Times, a British newspaper, earlier this year.
Some politicians are also asking what’s the point.
In 2012, French president François Hollande proposed banning homework for children in primary & middle school.
Last year, an elementary school in Quebec banned homework because it was putting too much pressure on students & their parents.
Homework is not only a pain, its “educational value” is still unclear, particular at younger grades.
One public school in Barrie even noticed that grades went up after homework was banned.
If the ban in New York gets kids playing outdoors, other schools should follow suit.
According to the latest “report card” issued by Active Healthy Kids Canada, only 7% of children ages 5 to 11 meet Canada’s daily physical-activity guidelines.
Those guidelines set an embarrassingly low bar: at least one-hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day.
For a little historical context, harken back to an anti-homework argument in the 1920s. Back then, physicians in the US worried that homework might damage children’s health. Doctors believed ... that children needed 6 to 7 hours a day of fresh air & sunshine, as Etta Kralovec, author of The End of Homework, has pointed out.
If we want our kids to grow up to make sound decisions based on evidence, we should set a good example by banning homework in elementary school.
The brain is actually a supple, malleable organ, as ready to unlearn as it is to learn, capable of transforming vicious circles into virtuous circles, of resetting & repairing its internal communications. Far more than once dreamed possible, the brain can—if not always cure—heal itself.
Doidge wrote about the brain’s remarkable ability to recalibrate itself—what doctors call neuroplasticity—in his 2007 bestseller The Brain That Changes Itself. His new book recounts an astounding array of radical improvements in brain problems long thought irreversible. There are newly effective therapies, leading to improvement in, & sometimes even complete cures, for conditions ranging from stroke to traumatic brain injuries, learning disorders & missing brain parts. Even Parkinson’s & MS symptoms can be improved in new ways. “Like Marshall McLuhan said, the future is already here,” says Doidge in an interview. “The early neuroplasticians had to battle to get their findings accepted but now the field is not remotely controversial. I’m no longer talking about ‘promising’ developments down the road, but therapies that are here now. Patients & their caregivers just have to know who is doing things they thought impossible.”
Consider Dr. Michael Moskowitz, who knows pain both professionally & intimately. The co-operator of Bay Area Medical Associates in Sausalito, Calif., Moskowitz is a star in the treatment of pain, the man who sets the exams in pain medicine for aspiring American doctors. ... “We are where people come to die with their pain,” he told Doidge. By 2007, 13 years after a waterskiing accident, it looked like Moskowitz would be one of them. The acute pain from his neck injury had morphed into permanent, & growing, chronic pain.
It did so via the same mechanisms that create that transformation in anyone. “Chronic pain is plasticity gone wild,” Doidge says. The injury to Moskowitz’s neck had also affected his body’s pain system, specifically the neurons in the brain associated with the neck area, causing them to fire repeated false alarms long after the neck had healed. What happened next illustrates core laws of neuroplasticity. Neurons that fire together, wire together: the more Moskowitz’s pain signals flared, the better & quicker they became at it. Use it or lose it: the fight for brain territory is competitive. The more Moskowitz favoured his neck because of the pain, the less the neurons involved with it had to do, & the more vulnerable they become to hijacking by nearby areas, including the pain sensors now working overtime. Moskowitz was caught in a vicious circle. His pain, 3/10 on the standard scale at the best of times, & spiking frequently to 8/10, was only getting worse. “Plasticity is a blessing when you’re listening to classical music & developing an appreciation for it,” Doidge wryly notes, “but it’s a curse when you are reinforcing pain.”
As his quality of life inexorably eroded, Moskowitz sat down to read 15,000 pages of cutting-edge neurological research, seeking a way to make plasticity work for him. Moskowitz concentrated on 2 areas of the brain among the dozen that do at least some pain processing, the posterior cingulate & the posterior parietal lobe, areas whose primary purpose is to deal with visual information.
He knew already that when a brain area is processing pain it uses about 5% of the neurons in the area, but the reinforcement involved in chronic pain means about 15% - 20% of the neurons become involved. By concentrating on an image of his brain—an image in which it changed from being lit up by pain activity to being calm & pain-free—Moskowitz thought he could quiet the original pain receptors & force the hijacked neurons back to their day jobs as visual processors.
It required relentless dedication at first, a conscious response to every twinge. In 3 weeks, Moskowitz thought he detected slight improvement, enough to spur him on; by 6 weeks the pain that had spread to his back was gone; within a year he was almost always pain-free everywhere. He had turned the vicious circle virtuous. “Relentlessness was the most important factor, absolutely,” Doidge agrees. “As a psychiatrist, I know that if you reframe a symptom attack as an opportunity, if instead of becoming crestfallen & pulling back, you treat every pain, anxiety or inhibition—reframe it as your moment—that’s the route to altering that circuitry. That’s what Moskowitz did. He didn’t let a single twinge of pain go by.”
Intense dedication is a hallmark of those who, all on their own, accomplish large-scale change in their brains. John Pepper, a South African now in his late seventies, was diagnosed in his thirties with the incurable, chronic, progressive neurodegenerative disease known as Parkinson’s. By all odds he should be immobile, if not dead, by now, but Pepper has fought his symptoms to a standstill by vigorous exercise carried out with ferocious determination & conscientious attention to detail. “Even as his unconscious ability to walk unravelled,” Doidge explains, “Pepper realized that if he analyzed how he walked & used his conscious mind to guide him, he could still do it. So he used a different part of his brain, the frontal lobes, &—like a child learning to walk—thought himself into efficient walking.”
People with Parkinson’s have 6 times the dementia rate of those who do not, & Pepper is reaching what are the danger years for anyone, yet his mind is sharp. That, together with his mode of exercise & the first-the-right-heel-then-the-left-knee precision with which he pursues it, raise a question about Alzheimer’s, a disease where both exercise & conscientiousness are proven factors in delaying onset. Is Alzheimer’s a disease of plasticity, or rather of its absence? Doidge is cautious in response. “There are so many ways of looking at Alzheimer’s. Most researchers analyze it chemically, because of the proteins involved, in hopes of finding alleviating drugs, but to look at Alzheimer’s that way is to put it under the microscope at very high power—it is more holistic to think of an Alzheimer’s brain as one that is losing plasticity.”
Whether walking battles the onset of dementia through its link to plasticity or by its more general health benefits, it’s one of the most potent anti-dementia forces known. “Now we have the Cardiff study looking at the British men over 30 years & it shows that if you did 5 things, including walking at least 3 kilometres a day,” Doidge says, “the risk of dementia falls a staggering 60%. If any medication did that, it would be the most talked-about drug in history.”
Not that drugs have any role in the story Doidge tells. Moskowitz, who has switched the goal of his clinic from pain management to pain eradication, recognizes that he himself (& the likes of Pepper) is an outlier set apart by his iron determination. Not all his patients can follow him down his own relentless road. Even so, Moskowitz does not always seek to aid them with drug therapy—instead devoting considerable effort to weaning them from painkillers—but with touch, sound & vibration. It’s a pattern Doidge sees everywhere. “Almost all the success stories involve a combination of mind & energy.”
Much of The Brain’s Way of Healing is devoted to non-invasive energy therapies. The author is particularly enamoured with light therapy, once far more prominent in Western medicine than it is now. Doidge likes to quote Florence Nightingale, who said “Light is not only a painter but a sculptor,” after she took note that wounded soldiers in outdoor field hospitals in Crimea recovered better than those stuck indoors. “We are far more transparent than we think & more sensitive to light than we think. So I have an entire chapter on the use of light, including cold lasers, to heal the brain.”
Light and other energy therapies have fallen from favour, Doidge believes, because for 50 years scientists have focused on the brain’s material & chemical side. Chemicals do work in small regions for signalling, he says, but the true universal language of the brain lies in its pattern of electrical signals. “All our senses take energy from outside & translate it into another form of energy inside the brain. Clinicians can now use these natural forms of energy to ‘talk’ to the brain.” And nothing speaks more loudly and clearly than the electrical pulses of the PoNS.
Originally thought of by its inventors as an aid for brain-injured people with balance troubles, the Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator has astonished even them with its effectiveness over a range of conditions &, especially, the speed with which it helps. A small, pocket-sized device, part of which went into the mouth & rested on the tongue & part of which stayed outside—144 electrodes that fired off electric pulses to activate the tongue’s sensory neurons. After 2 weeks of sessions with it, a voiceless MS patient could sing; a woman immobilized by Parkinson’s could walk; a stroke victim who couldn’t understand a newspaper article could read whatever she wanted.
All this because the tongue, Doidge says, “is the royal road to the brain”—with no dead skin & a moist surface making it an excellent conductor, & rich in sensory preceptors for touch, taste & pain that lead directly to the brain stem. “The PoNS turned out to be a very good stimulator for the whole brain.” Doidge thinks it clears up “noise” in the brain caused by disease or injury. “People tend to think neurons are either dead or alive afterwards, but actually many are firing at an irregular or wrong rate. Incoming information is thus chaotic & noise-filled, with even the healthy cells unable to communicate.” The PoNs, via the tongue’s access to the brain stem & hence the entire brain, can reset the circuitry, allow effective electrical communication & return the brain to a state of equilibrium. That’s why the application is so wide-ranging: with the noise gone, the brain starts working with what it has, in whatever condition it finds itself.
For decades, Doidge remarks, scientists wouldn’t use “healing” & “brain” in the same sentence, because they thought the brain was so sophisticated that it lacked self-healing powers. That turned out to be wrong—the brain is even more sophisticated than anyone realized.
Teen years always the most troubling & scary part of our years. Although, this article is a good one, every parent has a different way & experience of bringing up their teen through those difficult years. Some pass with flying colours, while others crash & burn. Every parent has their own story & wisdom to pass on to other parents. What actually works is different for everyone. But then, it never hurts to learn from others, either, or at least keep these thoughts in the back of one's mind.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conventional wisdom has long held that our brains are largely developed by puberty. However, research in the past 10-15 years has shown that our brains continue to develop in fundamental ways through the teen years & even into the late 20s & 30s. In fact, Jensen argues in her new book, The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents & Young Adults, the teenage years comprise one of the brain’s most critical periods for development—likely every bit as crucial as early childhood. “That 7 years in their life is, in a way, as important as their first 7 years of life,” Jensen says. “It is probably one of the most important 7-year [periods] in their entire life.”
Among the most popular misconceptions about brain development is the idea that the most important changes happen in the first 3 years of life. This “myth of three,” has been the source of intense parental anxiety over the fear that “adults are in a race against time to provide stimulation to their infants before their synapses are lost,” writes Paul Howard-Jones, a professor of neuroscience & education at the University of Bristol in the journal Nature. ... Behind the seemingly invincible teenage boy with the booming voice & adult body is a brain that is still incredibly vulnerable to everything from sports-related concussions to mental illness & addiction. New research is uncovering ways in which the activities that so often typify teenage years, such as experimenting with cigarettes & marijuana & alcohol, can lower a teen’s IQ or increase susceptibility to mental illness later on. Chronic stress stemming from family violence, poverty or bullying has also been linked to changes in the teen brain that can raise the risk of mood disorders or learning disabilities.
At the heart of our understanding of brain development are 2 basic concepts: grey matter & white matter. Grey matter consists of neurons, the brain cells that form the building blocks of the brain. White matter, axons, are the connections that form between grey matter, helping to move information from one area of the brain to the next.
While grey-matter growth is indeed almost completely finished by the age of 6, white matter—the wiring between brain cells—continues to develop well into the 20s. In fact, says Jensen, that wiring is only about 80% complete by the age of 18.
Along with new wiring, the brains of teens & young adults are also undergoing a process called myelination, in which those white-matter connections are being coated in a protective fatty material. Myelin acts as a form of insulation, allowing signals to move faster between brain cells, helping to speed the flow of information in the brain. Since both the wiring to the prefrontal cortex, & the insulation, is incomplete, teens often take longer to access their prefrontal cortexes, meaning they have a harder time making accurate judgments & controlling their impulses. The process of myelination continues into the 30s, giving rise to questions about how old someone must be to be considered to have a fully developed “adult” brain.
At the same time that teens’ brains are laying down connections & insulation, puberty has triggered pituitary glands to release hormones that are acting on the limbic system, the brain’s emotional centre. The combination of heightened emotions & an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex explains why teens are often prone to emotional outbursts, says Jensen, & also why they seek out more emotionally charged situations, from sad movies to dangerous driving.
Hormones also appear to have a different effect in teens than they do in adults. The hormone THP, which is released by the body in response to stress, has a calming effect in adults, but actually seems to have the opposite effect in teens, increasing stress. It’s one reason why teens are prone to anxiety & post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s also a good reason, Jensen says, why parents & schools should be sensitive to the problem of bullying.
Along with new wiring, insulation & hormones, teen brains are highly sensitive to the release of dopamine, which plays on the areas of the brain that govern pleasure & helps explain why teens seem to take so many risks.
It’s not that they don’t know any better. In fact, reasoning abilities are largely developed by the age of 15 & studies have shown that teens are as accurate as adults when it comes to understanding if an activity is dangerous. Their brains are just more motivated by the rewards of taking a risk than deterred by its dangers. So even if they know something might be bad—speeding, drinking too much, trying new drugs—they get more pleasure from taking the risks anyway.
Central to our understanding of how teens learn is “pruning”—a period when the brain begins to shed some of the grey-matter cells built up in childhood to make room for the growth of white matter. A long period of grey-matter growth in childhood, followed by vigorous pruning in adolescence, has been linked to higher intelligence, Jensen says.
It’s for this reason that Jay Giedd, an expert in child & adolescent brain imaging at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, describes the teen years as a special period of “use it or lose it” for the brain. Brain cells grown in childhood that continue to get used in adolescence form new connections, while those that go unused wither away. It’s also another reason why parents should be anxious about what happens during the teen years—adolescence now appears to be a period that can make or break a child’s intelligence.
A significant consequence of pruning is that IQ, once thought to be fixed for life after childhood, can in fact change dramatically during the teen years.
Learning is a process of repeatedly exposing the brain to something that stimulates the production of dopamine, which strengthens connections in the brain’s reward centre & helps form new memories. Addiction, therefore, is simply a form of “overlearning” by the brain, Jensen says. That process can be controlled by the prefrontal cortex, but since teens are so primed for learning & have less of an ability to access the prefrontal cortex, they’re also more susceptible to addictions.
In an era marked by the ideological tug-of-war over how best to raise our teenagers, what’s a parent to do with this new science of the teenage brain? More rules—an approach exemplified by Yale professor Amy Chua’s 2011 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother? Or in intervening too much, do parents risk raising teens whose brains never learn how to become an adult—an approach typified by the backlash against “helicopter parenting” & movements like “slow parenting” & “free-range kids.”
In Teenage Brain, Jensen puts herself squarely in the camp of the highly involved parent. She encourages parents to proof-read their teen’s homework, help them make lists to prioritize their assignments, watch them as they do schoolwork to see if they’re getting distracted & to not be afraid to “sound like a broken record” in reminding teens over & over again about the dangers that could befall them.
She encourages parents to “be your teen’s frontal lobes” & to “try to think for your teenage sons & daughters until their own brains are ready to take over the job.”
Jensen argues that it’s a parent’s job to protect their teens from their own often short-sighted behaviour, while allowing them enough room for “safe failures.”
In the quagmire of parental advice, it’s no surprise that the counterargument to the neuroscience approach to parenting is robust, & passionate. Psychologist Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, believes that adolescent rebellion has little to do with brain development & lots to do with how society treats teenagers. He argues scientists have it backward: teens don’t act out because they have immature brains struggling to navigate an adult world, but because they have adult brains railing against a society that treats them like children.
Other research is challenging the notion that teens have a less mature & less connected prefrontal cortex & are therefore inherently more impulsive than adults.
At Temple University, Steinberg has used a car-racing video game to show that when teens are alone they perform as well as adults on tasks involving a tradeoff of risk & reward. But when other teens are in the room watching, adolescents tend to make far riskier decisions. Adults show no difference if other adults watch them, suggesting that teen risk-taking is likely social.
BJ Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Cornell University, found that teens could be less impulsive if they were offered rewards. The greater the reward, the longer teens took to make a decision, suggesting that parents trying to control a hot-headed teen might want to offer rewards for good decisions rather than punishing bad ones.
“You look at the high school dropout rates & the people that fall off the curve not because of academic reasons, but because of peer pressure or drugs,” Jensen says. “It’s so sad because this is a time where you can actually make up for your innate weaknesses. We could get so much more out of our teenagers—& who they become later in life, in many cases—if we took a different approach to this window of time.”
