Reading Log Stephen G. Abelada TIME Magazine/ May 10, 2004 Issue/ What Makes Teens Tick?

By Claudia Wallis, with reporting by Alice Park (New York) and Kristina Dell This very informative and comprehensive article is mainly about the coherent 13-year study (1991-2004) lead by American child psychiatrist Dr. Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. to determine how the brain develops from childhood into adolescence and eventually into early adulthood. Peering inside heads of about 1,800 kids and teenagers through highpowered Magnetic Resource Imaging (MRI) snapshots of their brains taken every 2 years and establishing records for each individual, he and his colleagues were able to prove that not only is the adolescent brain far from being mature (as adolescents parents instinctively know) but also both gray and white matter in the brain undergo extensive structural changes even well past puberty. Such scanning studies cracked open a window on the physiologically-developing brain and helped experts for understanding how these changes account for adolescent behavior like emotional outbursts, reckless risk-taking and rule breaking and impassioned pursuit for sex, drugs and rock n roll. By virtue of these results as well, specialists can hopefully map out potential reasons for a childs development of mental disorders particularly schizophrenia, ADHD and bipolar disorder. So first, I just want to recognize Dr. Giedds patience and enthusiasm in attributing 13 or more years of his life in pursuit of unfolding the secrets of the adolescent brain to us. This is a great leap not only for Psychology and Psychiatry alone but for the general people as well due to the results revolutionizing view of the mystifying ways of how a teenagers mind operates. Learning all these made me associate such findings as to the whys and hows teens like me exhibit particular behaviors and thus appreciate the fact that such dispositions are not entirely the result of an adolescents stubbornness or pigheadedness as other older people label or call it. For instance, being informed about the human brains development stages helped me to discern that the last part of the brain to actually develop is the area capable of deciding, planning, weighing consequences of ones actions and organizing thoughts and that this overall process of brain evolvement still continues up to age 25. This gives me a relief somehow. Sometimes, I find it troublesome to formulate and systematize plans for the day. Other times I end up wasting about 15 minutes or more just determining the pros and cons of a final decision after it has been intricately brain-picked from the initial, numerous ones. Knowing that this condition is normal for us adolescents made me feel better and thus enhanced on me the desire of improving such skills to which we are not still proficient enough. Perhaps another concept introduced in the article to which I was attached

to is that of the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman which is "neural Darwinism" survival of the fittest (or most used) synapses. This made me ascertain the reason why Im not that skilled in drawing as I used to be 5 years ago since Ive never practiced often as I did before. Its like that such talent has been more or less pruned away from me. From this theory, I can really now attest that the brain is the only part of the body to which experiences and how we spend our time become actual flesh. Meanwhile, the idea of raging hormones for adolescents has also been verified in the study. Adrenal sex hormones, which exert direct influence on serotonin and other neurochemicals that regulate mood and excitability, have been found to be very active in the brain at puberty stage. I think that these raging hormones are very much responsible as to why sometimes I have this unusual appetite for thrills, strong sensations or uncontrollable excitement which promote in me what we call exploration to try new things out. Aside from these emotional outbursts, I also encountered for several times making wrong impressions and misreading emotional signals from other people like she is haughty! or he cant be trusted even without being acquainted with such people before. This natural tendency to judge based on how we adolescents feel and see, as Ive learned, is due to our relying heavily in the amygdala, a brain structure associated with emotional and gut reactions. Unlike the adolescents however, adults instead depend upon the brains frontal lobe which is inherently associated with planning and judgment. Likewise, immaturity of our brains nucleus accumbens is responsible as to why sometimes our motivation for doing something such as finishing assigned tasks is hard to come by if theres no assurance of a reward at the end. Maybe another issue in the article I really caught would be the restlessness of teens like me. I sometimes watch TV series such as The Vampire Diaries, New Girl by Zooey Deschanel, films etc without me realizing that its early morning already. This might be explained by the production of melatonin (responsible for shutting down our bodies for sleep). In fact, studies by Mary Carskadon at Brown University have shown that it takes longer for melatonin levels to rise in teenagers than in younger kids or in adults, regardless of exposure to light or stimulating activities. So to assimilate all these ideas to a unifying statement, the situation at which adolescents are, for me, is like turning on the engine of a race car without a professionally-skilled driver on the wheel. We teens cant completely control what we feel and how we think, how we interpret and process things around us since there is the engine which does it all. Most parents, of course, know this instinctively. Still, it's useful to learn that teenage behavior is not just a matter of willful pigheadedness or determination to drive parents crazy - though these, too, can be factors. I just want to emphasize to parents right now that it might be more useful to help adolescents make up for what their brain still lacks by providing structure, organizing their time, guiding them through tough decisions (even when they resist) and applying those time-tested parental virtues: patience, understanding and love.