Growing student debt is entrenching unfairness for a whole generation

Although, this opinion piece is focused on the problem with post-secondary education in UK, & a little bit on US (for comparison purposes), I would say that's the condition of education, & consequently society, mostly everywhere in the world.

Everyone loves to talk about how education is important for everyone in today's society & how education is the key for future economic stability for the nations & financial independence for the individuals. BUT, what no one talks about is how education is keep becoming expensive & jobs are keep becoming dependent on personal & professional networks than mere education.

Education is definitely important & must be attained by everyone. But how can a poor student, & most students are from poor family backgrounds (thanks to the world economy), pay already-exorbitant & ever-increasing school fees? Except a few countries around the world (& you can probably count them on your fingers), most countries have / are cutting their education spending, & hence, education institutes are constantly increasing their fees, which in turn, reduce the chances for a poor student to ever break the cycle of poverty he/she is thrust into & become educated & financially independent.

The fees are increasing because of several factors:

1. Governments at all levels are cutting their education funding. Governments, however, are more than happier to keep increasing their military funding. So, the finite financial power a government has, is being diverted towards making it easier to kill a human than to educate a human.

2. Government officials are being controlled by rich & powerful elites of the country. These elites want a stratified society where masses of poor are at their behest to do their work while they enjoy their days sitting in their golden chairs.

3. Taking the second point further, those rich & powerful elites might have become so rich & powerful through a finance-based economy. For instance, Wall Street has made quite a few individuals rich & powerful in US. Now, those individuals want more & more people to take out loans & hence, get trapped in the continuing & unending cycle of debt. Since, the younger generation keeps being shown the dream that if you get more education, you will one day join those powerful elites, the student enrollment keeps increasing. More student = more student loans, which in turn, helps those rich elites become ever more richer & powerful.

4. Education institutes are becoming more a business than a place to share knowledge. Profit & loss are becoming the focus of the education institutes than increasing the level of humanity through education & hence, making a better society, at the national & global levels. In this quest of making more profits, professors are being given contract jobs with minimum-level wages, while students are being charged ever higher fees.

To make matters worse, & as the opinion piece also mentions, that the earning power of new generation also keeps getting worse & worse. So, the education costs is increasing, which require bigger & bigger loans, but the wages are not keeping up with those education costs either, so it takes longer & longer, decades in most cases, for new graduates to pay off those debts.

As the opinion piece further mentions, education is becoming more "what can I study which will get me more money" instead of "what can I study which will make me a better human". For instance, arts education is being derided for graduating out people who are becoming a drain on the country, since they are not considered useful in money-making professions, whereas, education in Information Technology, Medicine, Engineering, & Business for instance is emphasized because graduates of these faculties have a higher chance of making more money than arts graduates. That's, of course, is creating more graduates with silo mindsets, who are focused more on making money, in any way they can, instead of students who want to love learning their whole lives & want to pursue a more well-rounded education.

Job market is also becoming more network-based than education or even skills-based. Since, education institutes have become "degree-granting industries", they are graduating more & more people with degrees, regardless of whether the society needs those degrees or not. So, a country, & even the world, is ending up being flooded with people with degrees. Every other person is an engineer, an MBA, an accountant, a marketing expert, a communications master & whatnot. Since, there are a finite number of businesses & employers, hiring is being done more on the basis of personal & professional networks than pure merit of education & skills.

All of these factors are resulting in a society, on a national & international level, where more & more graduates are frustrated & depressed with increasing debts & decreasing incomes, an ever-increasing gap between rich & poor, more & more people with multiple degrees but either unemployed or less-than-ideal employment, & a society with siloed mindsets due to the unavailability, & unpopularity, of a rounded education than a quick money-making education.

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/09/student-debt-kick-in-teeth-for-poor-families

...
In 2015, English universities are spending £800m on promoting access for disadvantaged students as the quid pro quo for increasing their fees to £9,000 – a patchwork quilt of scholarships, fee-waivers, induction & remedial courses & building links with communities & schools to appeal to students from poorer backgrounds. It seems to be working. Analysis by the recent final report of the Independent Commission on Fees (which I chaired) shows that over the past 5 years the proportion of students from disadvantaged homes has risen markedly.

... If 12,000 more students from poorer homes are enrolling at university than 5 years ago, that hardly compensates for the collapse in part-time student numbers, falling by 152,000 over the same period. The principal cause is fear of debt, a trend that will be accelerated by the ending of maintenance grants in the budget. While part-time numbers are holding up in Scotland, Northern Ireland & Wales, which don’t charge £6,750 for part-time courses, they are plunging in England, which does. Part-time foundation degrees, certificates & diplomas of higher education are people’s second chance, especially for the over-25s, who represent four-fifths of the drop. The number of mature students doing full-time degrees is also falling. Together this represents one of the biggest setbacks to social mobility in modern times.

The notion that Britain’s students are simply shrugging off debts that by 2020 will be approaching £50,000 as universities index fees to inflation, bringing them near to £10,000, is far too optimistic. Today’s 16- to 18-year-olds are beginning to worry as much about debt as their older peers. A ComRes opinion survey commissioned by the Sutton Trust reports that 78% of young people were concerned as potential students about the cost of living, 68% by high tuition fees & 58% by having to repay student loans. They are right. The US is often quoted as the country whose system of student funding most cloesely corresponds to England’s, but because of generous scholarships in private universities & very low fees charged by many state universities, only 70% of US students graduate with debt, which in any case only averages £22,750. In Britain, all students graduate with debt almost twice the US level.

Already in the US there are grave concerns about the social implications. Couples are waiting longer before they marry; the birthrate is falling; home ownership among under-40s is plummeting; & the rate of small business formation by young people is decreasing. As loan default rates rise, the whole exercise threatens to become self-defeating.The consequences in England promise to be more pronounced. Property prices in relation to income are much higher & graduates shouldering student debt are in no position to save up the huge deposit needed to buy a home. Moreover, the fee regime is interacting with a collapse in young people’s real wages – down more than 10% since 2008.

Britain is in the process of creating the most stratified, least socially mobile, cruelly unfair society in
its treatment of the young in the advanced world. The over-50s, rejoicing in the untaxed capital gains they enjoy from buying property a generation ago, will help their own kids, but are not asked to help anyone else’s. As in the US, family formation, the birthrate, home ownership & small business startups are all beginning to be affected & parents will work far into old age to try to help their children. All this to ensure that the allegedly malevolent state is shrunk.

Worse, the debt is structured so that the compound interest rate effect of not paying it off early makes it even more onerous, an effect vastly more likely to hit students from disadvantaged homes. Yes, more are getting to university but, with a few exceptions, not the top ones whose degrees are most valued by employers. Students from advantaged neighbourhoods are 10 times more likely to go to a Russell Group university than those from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. So not only do students from poorer homes have parents not rich enough to be able to help them, their earning power will be less. George Osborne’s legacy, ranging from relaxing inheritance tax to allowing parents to leave their pension pot to their kids & eliminating maintenance grants, will be a society in which the rich are better able to help their indebted children, while the disadvantaged will be left as bottom-tier citizens, renting homes while engaged in a lifelong struggle to repay their student debt. Three-quarters will be paying off loans in their 50s.

And as in the US, default rates are rising. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills now thinks that 45% of the loans for full-time students will never be repaid, along with 65% of loans to part-time students; the taxpayer will pick up the bill. Indeed, the default rate is now so high that the system is nearly as costly as the low-fee regime it replaced. Meanwhile, universities are finding that more students want to do degrees more likely to deliver high salaries; little by little, they are being transformed from centres of rounded academic teaching & research excellence across the gamut of subjects to high-class employment agencies.

Is any of this what we want as a society? Is it so important that the state consumes only 35.5% of GDP rather than, say, 37% that we are prepared to sacrifice social mobility, entrench class, lower home ownership, enslave a generation to debt & diminish the idea of the university? At the very least, average debt levels should be no higher than those in the US, with many more concessions for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is too big a cause to be marginalised as that of the “left”. It is everyone’s – & time mainstream politicians spoke up.


Will Hutton is principal of Hertford College, Oxford

"Idiotic Behaviours" by Monte Wolverton

"Idiotic Behaviours" - Monte Wolverton, US

World War Z quote

 IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

So true. That's the same problem people have, for instance, with understanding the problem of climate change or cloning or economics or finance or any number of problems, on a micro or macro level. Regardless of how much an expert tells them that it will become a problem later on, people will hold on to their beliefs until that given event has happened. Watching it by their own eyes is the only way for them to believe. BUT, by that point, it's already too late for those people to save themselves from whatever that problem or calamitous event it is.

It's the same problem Quran mentions multiple times. Several prophets came & told the same thing to their people, but until & unless, God's punishment came down upon them, the public didn't believe those prophets. And by that time, it was already too late for any repentance. Be it Noah's people or Lot's, Shelah's (Saleh's) or Eber's (Hud's), they all didn't believe their prophets until God's punishment came down upon them.

"Negative Energy Generator" by Andy Singer

"Negative Energy Generator" - Andy Singer, US

The science is in: God is the answer

A great article. It lays out the science, & scientists' & researchers' narratives for both sides of the argument that believing in a "higher power" is good for your health & believing in a "higher power" is all bonkers. So, the reader has to make up his/her own mind what they think is correct or take it merely as FYI.

What I found interesting is that believing in a "higher power" by an individual, from the heart & mind of that individual, helps that individual deal with life much more resolutely. It becomes a debate about religion vs ritual. People (as teenagers or adults) follow a religion blindly & never question it or reason with it. They don't build on that thinking of logic & reasoning with those hard questions of life. Belief in spirituality or religion has to come from within, & should not be imposed by an outsider (be it a very loving parent).

So, the parental advice from this long article is that, parents should not force their kids into believing a certain religion or spirituality movement or even atheism. Be there as a guide for your children, especially, in their troubled teen years. In those years, those teens will try to form their own identity & hence, will seek out religion / spirituality or even atheism, to deal with their problems & issues. Parents need to be with their teenage kids as their guide & help them along in the exploration of hard questions of believing in a "higher power". Do not be alarmed or desert them if they choose to believe in a religion or movement, which conflicts with your sense of believing in a higher power.
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http://www.macleans.ca/society/science/god-is-the-answer/

18 years ago, Lisa Miller, now the director of clinical psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College, had an epiphany on a New York subway car. She had been poring over the mountains of data generated by a three-generation study of depressed women & their children & grandchildren. The biological trend was clear: Women with severe—& particularly with recurrent—depression had daughters at equally high risk for the psychological disorder. At puberty, the risk was 2 to 3 times greater than for other girls. But the data seemed to show that the onset &, even more so, the incidence of recurring bouts with depression, varied widely.
 
Miller couldn’t discern why. Raised in a close-knit Midwestern Jewish community, she had already looked for what she says psychologists rarely bothered to seek—religious belief & practice—& found some mild benefit for both mothers & children, but nothing that stood out among the other variants, such as socio-economic status. Then came the subway ride.
 
She was in a subway car crowded at one end & almost empty at the other, because that end was occupied by a “dirty, dishevelled man” brandishing a piece of chicken at everyone who boarded while yelling, “Hey, do you want to sit with me? You want some of this chicken?” The awkward scene continued for a few stops until an older woman & a girl of about 8—grandmother & granddaughter, Miller guessed—got on. The man bellowed his questions, & the pair nodded at one another & said, “Thank you,” in unison, & sat beside him. It astonished everyone in the car, including Miller & the man with the chicken, who grew quieter & more relaxed.
 
The child’s evident character traits—compassion, acceptance, fearlessness—at so young an age prompted Miller’s eureka moment. What struck her was the nod & all it implied: “It was clear as day that the grandchild fully understood how one lives out spiritual values in her family.” 20 minutes later, Miller was in her lab, running equations on the data that were, in effect, a search for “the statistical nod.” She was looking for mother-teen pairs who had reported a shared religion or non-religious spirituality. She calls the results “the most amazing science I had ever seen.” In the pairs Miller found in the data, shared spirituality (religious or otherwise)—if it reached back to the child’s formative years—was 80% protective in families that were otherwise at very high risk for depression.
 
It was the start of a long & sometimes rocky road for both Miller & the place of spirituality—however defined—in mainstream psychological thinking. ... But Miller & other researchers, including so-called “spiritual” neuroscientists like Montreal’s Mario Beauregard & the much-cited American psychologist Kenneth Kendler continued to explore the intersection of religiosity & mental health in studies published in major, peer-reviewed science journals. By the end of it, as Miller sets out in a provocative new book, The Spiritual Child ..., she was convinced not only of spirituality’s health benefits for people in general, but of its particular importance for young people during a stage of human development when we are most vulnerable to impulsive, risky or damaging behaviours.
 
In fact, Miller declares, spirituality, if properly fostered in children’s formative years, will pay off in spades in adolescence. An intensely felt, transcendental sense of a relationship with God, the universe, nature or whatever the individual identifies as his or her “higher power,” she found, is more protective than any other factor against the big 3 adolescent dangers. Spiritually connected teens are, remarkably, 60% less likely to suffer from depression than adolescents who are not spiritually oriented. They’re 40% less likely to abuse alcohol or other substances, and 80% less likely to engage in unprotected sex. Spiritually oriented children, raised to not shy from hard questions or difficult situations, Miller points out, also tend to excel academically.
 
And teenagers can use all the help they can get. Recent research has revealed their neurological development to be as rapid & overwhelming as their bodily change. The adolescent brain is simultaneously gaining in intellectual power & losing in emotional control; its neural connections—its basic wiring—is a work in progress, with connections between impulse & second (or even first) thought slower than in adults. There is a surge in unfamiliar hormones &, as it turns out, a surge in spiritual longing.
 
Humans have an innate tendency to ascribe random & natural events to conscious agents & a hunger to belong to something larger than ourselves—both militant atheists & fervent believers can agree on this. The urge is never sharper than in adolescence, when, in the fraught process of individuation, teens develop their own sense of the world & their place in it. “A teen looks out at what’s been handed to him or her, from family or community,” Miller says, “& asks, ‘What about these values, what about this way of life is me, & what is not me?’ And this ‘me/not-me’ work is the most important work a teen does.”

In Miller’s view, & that of many traditional cultures, individuation—the way children become their own individuals rather than unconscious copies of their parents—is an essentially spiritual process. When that process runs into difficulties, says Miller, the health effects can be severe, especially in terms of depression, to which adolescents are suddenly vulnerable. In fact, half of all adults who have suffered depression had their first experience in adolescence; teens are considered the demographic most at risk for it. Research shows that up to 20% of adolescents have a major depression episode at some point, with an additional 40% or more exhibiting what are known as “sub-threshold” levels that leave them distressed enough to seek treatment at the same rates as kids with major depression—& as much at risk for depression in their adult years.
 
And numbers approaching two-thirds in a single age bracket, Miller argues, are far too high to ascribe to illness alone. Her argument is that brushes with depression are intrinsic to developmental & spiritual awakening. Teens in this often excruciating situation sometimes will turn to substance use, risky sex, physical danger—all of which are shortcuts to transcendence that ultimately have their roots in the same universal drive. On the other hand, adolescents who have supported spiritual lives, especially dating back to childhood, & “practice in asking & living through hard questions, are more prepared to face them,” Miller says.
 
The evidence for a personal religious advantage is overwhelming, Miller claims, drawn from literally “hundreds” of epidemiological & longitudinal studies. In a 2002 article published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, data taken from a 1995 survey of 3,300 teen girls in North Carolina showed that higher frequency of prayer or meditation correlated with decreased risk of depression. It’s worth noting that the advantage was conferred by individual devotion rather than the degree to which the girls believed sacred writings were the literal word of God—spirituality, then, rather than religion.
 
(Other studies have identified this distinction, which was first laid out in Kendler’s landmark twin study in 1997. Examining 1,900 female pairs, identical & fraternal, in the Virginia Twin Registry, he concluded people’s religious practices were broadly determined by environment, but that individual devotion was almost 50% due to a twin’s “unique personal environment.”)

A 2005 study found that a teen with this sort of spiritual connection—as manifested by statements like “I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty”—was at least 70% less likely to move from substance dabbling to substance abuse. Again, the key was personal engagement; there was no protective factor at all from going to church or taking part in family prayer when those acts came from obligation rather than conviction.
 
And a massive 2012 study from the department of child & family services at the University of Tennessee looked at 9,300 teens from half a dozen countries & regions, from China & India to Palestine & the US. Its authors cited an earlier American study that showed that religion had an inverse correlation with anti-social behaviour, including substance abuse, carrying weapons & drinking & driving, & a positive correlation with what the researchers called “pro-social behaviour,” which included everything from volunteerism to school engagement. Across the world, the Tennessee study found, adolescents who were more religious than their peer groups had lower rates of depression & higher self-esteem. Those teens who reported experiencing such internal states as “relational spirituality” & “meaningfulness of religion” also reported lower levels of depression. “Overall, there is much support for the relationship between religiosity & youth psychological well-being,” the authors wrote.
 
Similar correlations have been seen by neuroscientists who work primarily with adults. Researchers who have used neuroscans to examine people at high familial risk for depression have noted brain abnormalities. One 2004 study pinpointed cortical thinning across the lateral surface of the right cerebral hemisphere, which the authors suspected would produce disturbances in sensory arousal, attention & memory for social cues, a situation they suggested might explain the increased chances of developing depression.

“In our lab, we looked at the brains, through MRIs, of people who had a strong sense of relationship in a transcendental dialogue with their higher power,” recalls Miller. That two-way sacred relationship is central to Judeo-Christian spirituality ... & those people showed a thickening of the cortex in the same region. “They essentially had stronger wiring, through a sustained personal spirituality,” Millar explains. The exact implications of the neurological findings remain tentative, but stronger, thicker wiring is considered beneficial.
 
In his now iconic brain-scan studies of Franciscan nuns praying & Buddhist monks meditating, Andrew Newberg—perhaps the leading American expert on the neurological aspects of religion—saw the same neural pathways being used (& strengthened) whether his subject was seeking God or attempting to become one with the cosmos. So Miller was delighted to learn that her lab’s work with devout Christians was, “in an entirely different lab, in an entirely different sample,” replicated with subjects who were meditating. “This is no longer prayer in the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is experienced meditators,” says Miller. “And they too showed cortical thickening in the same regions.”

Patrick McNamara, whose neurological lab at Boston University studies what happens to the brain in religious practice, says, “There are studies that show that religiosity is associated with better executive function & self-control. Those things are moderating factors on a whole host of health-related behaviours.” Although he is more cautious than Miller & thinks religion’s protective features need more study, McNamara agrees that “in the long run we think that religiosity will confer a protective effect against all kinds of disorders.” McNamara has studied the role of the frontal lobes—the part of the brain that exerts executive control over other regions & which teens, incidentally, find hard to access—in religious experience. “The right prefrontal region is especially important for supporting maintenance of the self,” he says. “People who’ve had strokes in that region have problems with self-concept, & people who have dysfunction in that region show lower scores on religiosity tests—that’s what we found.” A strong self-concept, which tends to be enhanced by religion, he notes, is associated with better health outcomes.
 
In the 2 decades since she began her career, Miller’s field has moved from the fringe to respectability. Universities such as Duke & Baylor have research centres that focus on the intersection of religion & health & publish studies looking at everything from integrating spirituality into nursing care, to private religious activities & cardiovascular risk, to the interconnections of religious involvement, inflammatory markers & stress hormones in chronic illness. In 2012, Columbia’s teachers college, the oldest & largest graduate school of education in the US, began to offer the Ivy League’s first master’s concentration in spiritual psychology.
 
Miller’s ideas may also resonate more with many Canadians than the conventional wisdom about religion’s decline would suggest. University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby pioneered the study of religious trends in Canada. His newest data, gathered in partnership with the not-for-profit Angus Reid Institute, sees more than a quarter of Canadians reject religion, compared with the 30% who embrace it. But there is a vast middle ground, 44%, who file themselves between those two poles. Most of them presumably overlap with the 40% of Canadians who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” Some of the antagonism to, & hesitation about, religion comes from a reaction to organized religion’s institutional hypocrisies—shunting pedophile priests from one diocese to another, for example—and from what modern Westerners increasingly see as intolerable restrictions on their personal autonomy. But Miller says she frequently encounters mothers who worry the spirituality baby has been tossed out with the religious bathwater. The dogma-free spirituality she recommends (& practises herself), which can be “cultivated in nature, in service, in human relationships,” has appeal for adults, & not just for the benefits it promises their children.
 
But while the public may be open to Miller’s ideas ..., not everyone is sold on her conclusions. Many materially minded social scientists are skeptical of the neurological view & argue that the health benefits conveyed by religion result from the community support it offers. In her 2014 book The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier & Happier, Montreal-based developmental psychologist Susan Pinker cites a 7-year study of 90,000 women from across the US that found that those who attended religious services at least once a week were 20% more likely to have longer lifespans than those who did not. As much as the attendance itself, Pinker points to the ritualistic physical synchrony of religious services, the way “praying, chanting, singing, swaying & rocking all together” is “brain-soothing.”

The social benefit of community is behind the sporadic attempts, mostly in the US & Britain, to establish “atheist churches,” though this “if you can’t beat ’em” thinking ... is repellent to more militant atheists. The human tendency toward religious belief should be resisted in the cause of evidence-based science, not accommodated, even in health care.
 
Their cause is bolstered by religion’s dark side. Tight-knit religious communities can also be over-controlling & outright abusive. “Look at Bountiful,” says Pinker, in reference to the polygamy & child-trafficking charges laid against members of a fundamentalist Mormon community in the small B.C. town. And fundamentalist teens often exhibit high levels of risk-taking because, Pinker says, they have no space for mild rebellion. “They are from families where it is easier to get pregnant at 15 than confess to your parents you don’t believe in God.”

In fact, depression can strike those adolescents harder than teens outside organized religion. A paper by Rachel Dew, a prominent religion & health researcher at Duke University, examined 117 teen psychiatric patients, most from religious families, & found depression in them linked strongly to feeling abandoned by God or unsupported by their faith communities.
 
Dew, one of the most cited researchers in her field, agrees in an interview that there is “overwhelming evidence that teens involved in religion are less likely to fall into drug or alcohol abuse,” particularly teens who “self-identified” with their faith. Still, Dew continues, studying depression rates so far provides less certain evidence of the health benefits of spirituality or religion. Part of the reason for caution, she says, is that researchers are still uncertain how to define religion & are wrestling with questions of correlation & causation. “We know from twin studies that there is a genetic predilection for religion,” she says. When that’s accompanied by a lower risk of depression, is the cause “in the religion or in the same genetic predisposition?” Moreover, many survey tools remain unsophisticated, seeking religious internalization through religious affiliation questions like “Do you go to church?” “Here in the South,” says Dew, “people see no difference between spirituality & religion.”

Miller thinks it all actually proves her case. In a very real sense, she says, debates over social versus natural, or about neural correlates, miss the point. When she talks about spirituality, she says, it’s with the pragmatism derived from clinical experiences, itself born from patients’ experiences. “No one’s laying any theology or implicit theology on the child; it’s his or her emerging natural spirituality,” she says. Look at the narratives of those who come out of addiction, Miller urges. “They say, ‘It was a hunger to feel a sense of connection that got me in, & it was when I found my relationship with my higher power that I came out.’”

Parents don’t need “big answers” for adolescents working through this, Miller says, & certainly not dogmatic answers. “We just need to show up & take an interest, & let them know the work is real, that this is the set-up, the foundation on which they’ll build their house in life.” However defined ... an inclusive spirituality plainly works for human health & well-being, “& that’s why we do this work, to help kids not suffer.”

Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'

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.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31925449

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."

"Climate Talks & Realities" by Paresh Nath, India

"Climate Talks & Realities" - Paresh Nath, India

Souvenir Ultrasound scans should be banned for first 10 weeks of pregnancy

In this modern race of narcissism & ego-boasting, a selfie stick may not harm you or your loved ones as much as collecting souvenir pregnancy ultrasound scans.

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Souvenir scans of the unborn baby should not be carried out in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, say doctors.
 
Such keepsake images are shown off by proud parents-to-be, who can buy special wallets & photo frames to mark every stage of pregnancy.
 
But new advice from the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists rules against the growing trend when there is no medical reason for doing an early-stage scan.
 
A new scientific review says ultrasound – which uses high-frequency sound waves to provide images of the foetus – could expose it to unknown risks.
 
Although there is no evidence of harm, the ‘precautionary principle’ should apply, it says.
 
Dr. Christoph Lees, Reader in Obstetrics & Fetal Medicine at Imperial College London & lead author of the paper said the review looked specifically at the first 10 weeks in the womb.
 
Normally a scan would be ordered only for a potential problem identified by a clinician & in those circumstances it was perfectly safe, he said.
 
But an increasing number of clinics were offering keepsake images from as early as 6 weeks, he said.
 
He said: ‘Ultrasound scanning in the embryonic period is an invaluable resource in several important scenarios where the embryo is at possible risk.

‘There are presently no grounds for questioning the safety of diagnostic ultrasound in this context.

‘However, ultrasound imaging is increasingly being used without obvious medical justification & we have to be aware of the possibility of subtle long-term adverse effects, particularly in the first weeks of gestation when the embryo is potentially the most vulnerable.’

The review was produced by the Scientific Advisory Committee at the RCOG to provide doctors with up-to-date information about the issue.
 
The US Food & Drug Administration issued similar advice in December, saying excess ultrasound at any stage in pregnancy should be avoided.
 
Dr. Lees said one of the possible harms might come from the slight heating effect produced by ultrasound which was more easily dissipated by the placenta after 10 weeks of pregnancy.
 
He said the safest period for taking souvenir scans was 20 weeks of pregnancy & beyond.
 
The review highlights the various types of ultrasound, including B-mode – the most commonly used form of ultrasound in obstetrics – colour & pulse wave Doppler.
 
Colour & pulsed wave Doppler involve greater average intensity & power outputs than B-mode & are not recommended at all during the first 10 weeks.
 
Additionally, there has been a move to perform 3D & 4D ultrasound scans earlier in pregnancy, states the paper.
 
4D ultrasound is ‘real time’ scanning & involves higher power outputs as the scanning time is longer, typically by several minutes, & should not be the sole purpose of souvenir images or video recordings in early pregnancy.
 
Dr. Sadaf Ghaem-Maghami, chair of the RCOG’s Scientific Advisory Committee, said ‘B-mode ultrasound used for clinical reasons from conception to 10 weeks of gestation is safe & the benefits outweigh any theoretical risks.

‘We are adopting a precautionary approach & are highlighting the small but possible risks to women so that they can make informed choices.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2992481/Ultrasound-used-capture-photos-expose-foetus-unknown-risks-ten-weeks-pregnancy.html

Hormone-disrupting chemicals 'cost billions'

Although, I agree with the scientists' statements that these findings are "informed speculation", I still firmly believe that all these chemicals in our food & consumer products are adversely affecting our health in the developed world.
 
At least, the agriculture in the developing world is still done the old way, so the concept of "organic" food is still prevalent in the developing world. The hormone-disrupting chemicals / steroids given to animals flow through into our bodies & disrupt our hormones, causing several kinds of diseases, for which researchers haven't been able to find the root causes because it'd due to what we are putting in our mouths.
 
Now, people will say, well, then buy organic. There are several problems with that, too. Some "organic" food is not organic at all. The rise of the organics industry has also given rise to people who are passing off non-organics as organics. On top of that, organic food is expensive (unlike, in developing world), & thanks to the free trade deals, economy, class segregation etc etc in the society, it's usually the poor who relies on non-organics & consequently, suffers from its long-term consequences.

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The data suggests the high economic impact of chemicals in pesticides, plastics & flame retardants.
 
The team, led by New York University, said the estimates were conservative.
 
However, experts cautioned the findings were "informed speculation" & called for more detailed research.
 
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can be physically similar to the hormones that naturally control our body's physiology so mimic their function. They can also block the function of hormones.
 
They have been linked with declining sperm counts, some cancers, impaired intelligence, obesity & diabetes. The main concern surrounds their impact during early development.
 
The authors of the study argued that limiting exposure would have significant benefits.
 
Many of the conditions linked to EDCs are also influenced by a wide range of other environmental influences. And some scientists contest the levels in the environment are not high enough to influence health.
 
The international research team acknowledge "there is uncertainty" & adapted techniques used by the International Panel on Climate Change to balance the uncertainty with the potential scale of the impact.
 
Their mathematical models suggested that across the 27 members of the EU, the most likely cost was €157bn ($173bn; £113.6bn) a year, but could be much higher. That equates to 1.2% of Europe's GDP.
 
This included healthcare costs as well as lost economic potential.
 
Their calculations said it was more than 99% certain that at least one of the chemicals was indeed having an impact on health.
 
The major economic impact was from pesticides (€120bn; $132.3bn; £86.8bn), followed by chemicals found in plastics (€26bn; $28.7bn; £18.8bn) & flame retardants (€9bn; $9.9bn; £6.5bn).
 
Dr Leonardo Trasande, a paediatrician at the New York University school of medicine, told the BBC: "These results suggest that regulating endocrine disrupting chemicals could produce substantial economic benefit that would be less than the cost of implementing safer alternatives & produce net economic benefits."
 
The studies looked at less than 5% of suspected EDCs & did not look at conditions such as cancer & female reproductive diseases. Hence the scientific team argue that these are conservative estimates.
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The team's conclusions:
• Male reproductive disorders cost €4bn ($4.4bn; £2.9bn) per year
• Premature deaths, including through cardiovascular disease, cost €6bn ($6.6bn; £4.3bn) per year
• Obesity & diabetes cost €15bn ($16.5bn; £10.9bn per year)
• Neurological impact, including reduced intelligence, cost €132bn (£145.6bn; £95.5bn) per year
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http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31754366

A Dark Truth, Quote 4

A very important line for today's world. Now, everything is up for sale; be it tangible, i.e. anything from internal body organs to the lives of living beings (humans, animals & plants), & anything existing outside in our surroundings.
 
Or be it intangible, i.e. our spiritual & secular beliefs, thoughts & opinions, or our feelings ... they are for sale; be it the religious leaders in the world who change their positions depending on the buyer & sale price or scientists & politicians who change their positions depending on which lobbyist or industry is giving them money & votes or a wife's love for her husband, depending on how much jewelry & money he is giving her for her shopping.

 

Everything in this world, indeed, has a price but are we willing to sell it?

 

IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

Isaac Asimov quote (science & society)

... & that yawning gap between "smarter" science & "stupid" society creates a sense of complacency & faux-superiority in the people. People start to think that society has become modern now & humans have transcended their primal needs & the basic ills & misfortunes, e.g. the 7 deadly sins of Christianity.
 
BUT, therein lies the death sentence for the society. Science may have advanced & improved & the result is the shiny gadgets in our hands & information highway under the ocean, but Humans are still mired in the same habits as our ancestors, for instance, envy, gluttony, lust, greed, pride etc.

 
Even animals kill each other for food, not for pleasure. We humans, as Quran says, is given the status to be better than angels but our own actions can make us worse than animals. (95:4-5)
 
P.S. Isaac Asimov was an atheist but what he said lines up with religious books, & people think religion is the source of all evils.

 

How your brain can heal itself

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.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/how-your-brain-heals-itself/

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 9)

It's pretty much 2 quotes in one:
 
1. If you want to know your true yourself, you need to see yourself from others' eyes / perception. It is similar to what French poet, Jacques Rigaut, said (which I will be posting btw here soon) that your true self can only be seen by others. So, we should be open to learning & improving ourselves through constructive criticism of ourselves from others. None of us is all-knowing & perfect.
 
2. Since, the beginning of time (or civilization), regardless of whether you believe in a religion or not, we humans have worked tirelessly to increase our life span; so much so to achieve immortality. Be the alchemists of ancient civilizations or modern A.I. (artificial intelligence) & robotics engineers, we are still trying to achieve immortality. But immortality is supposed to be in our "words & deeds", & not in our physical immortality. Our words & deeds affect people around us &, perhaps society, to the point that they may have rippling effects throughout the future of this world.

 
During our finite lives, we may never realize how we may have affected the world, but you can look at any of the prominent people in our histories around the world, good or bad, have gone on to achieve immortality through their words & actions.

 

Gandhi on Food for everyone

Especially directed towards those who always say, "curb population growth. There's not enough resources in this world."
 
There are more than enough resources in this world to support everyone, but it's up to us (or perhaps our governments) to decide how best to use our resources to satisfy everyone's needs; be it financial, energy, human, water, or food resources. 

 

Inside Your Teenager's Scary Brain

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.
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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.”

http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/inside-your-teenagers-scary-brain/