Every day, we compare ourselves to others, both in person and increasingly online. Am I smarter than my friend? Am I nicer or friendlier? Such judgments require a type of “social reasoning” – first rating yourself and your friends and then making a comparison. Among adolescents, this type of thinking is even more common, with […]
Increasingly, the courts are turning to neuroscientific data as additional evidence in making legal decisions. From examining questions of impaired ability to even issues of diversity and bias, neuroscience and the law are intersecting more frequently. A key question often at stake is at what age is are people’s brains “mature enough” to make and […]
Q&A with Adriana Galvan We’ve all seen the headlines: “Your teenager’s brain is crazy,” “Teen brain wired to take risks,” “Why teenagers take dumb risks.” Less often covered is the flip side: how the changing adolescent brain provides an unparalleled opportunity for learning and innovation. That’s the shift in discussion Adriana Galvan of UCLA wants […]
Teenagers like to explore and push boundaries but not all exploration is the same. Neuroscientists have yet to fully distinguish between risk-taking, for example, as compared with strategically exploring novel experiences. A new study shows marked differences in brain activity among individual teens who are more or less exploratory. The work could help shape future […]
You’ve been stuck in traffic forever and are waiting in a long lineup at a red light. The light finally turns green and you start slowly moving, only to find that the light turns yellow as soon as you approach the intersection. Do you go for it and run the yellow (or maybe red!), or […]
Adolescents are infamous for engaging in more risky behavior as they mature from children to adults. This transition is notable for many changes, including a surge in testosterone for both boys and girls. The changing levels of testosterone, combined with the size of a frontal region of the brain, help to explain risk-taking in adolescence, […]
“This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs… any questions?” Scientists now are asking how public service announcements (PSAs) such as that powerful 1987 anti-drug ad affect the teenage brain. New research suggests that persuasive anti-drug ads activate both the emotional and executive functions of the teenage brain. “There is a clear need […]
April 16, 2013 – San Francisco – Brain scans are increasingly able to reveal whether or not you believe you remember some person or event in your life. In a new study presented at a cognitive neuroscience meeting today, researchers used fMRI brain scans to detect whether a person recognized scenes from their own […]
More and more research suggests that exercise is good for the aging brain. Researchers are also now working to understand how exercise affects the brains and behaviors of adolescents. A new study shows that while exercise does not improve teenagers’ performance on certain memory tasks, it does affect how their brains adapt to perform the […]
How our brains respond to race changes as we develop from children to adolescents, according to a new study on race perception. The researchers found that a child’s social environment plays an important role in developing neural bias to race. The more diversity we are surrounded by at a young age, the less a person’s […]
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