Research Watch: Message from Teen Brains: It’s Not Too Late!

Paul M. Thompson, Jay N Giedd, Roger Woods, et al.

Nature
Vol. 404, March 9, 2000

Free from Dr. Thompson at thompson@loni.ucla.edu.

A recent article in The Washington Post caught our eye: “Scientists have discovered that the brain undergoes surprisingly dramatic anatomical changes between the ages of 3 and 15, a finding that may not amaze parents of mercurial children but shatters some traditional assumptions about neural development.” It’s a good thing that the mass media picked this story up, because the original article is much less useful to most of us. It concluded: “By repeatedly scanning children (ages 3-15 years) across time spans of up to four years, a rostro-caudal wave of growth was detected at the corpus callosum, a fiber system that relays information between brain hemispheres.”

Fortunately, one of the authors, Dr. Jay Giedd from the National Institute of Mental Health, was glad to translate these findings. He thinks the results of this study are very important for youth workers, and very good news for youth. The bottom line is that the activities that youth participate in will influence how their brains work for the rest of their lives.

We already knew that a first grader’s brain is approximately 95 percent of the size of the adult brain, Giedd explained. But the size of the brain is not the only important factor. That’s because the brain uses a clever way to wire itself: It overproduces cells and connections, and then there is a fierce battle to survive. “We thought this occurred in the womb and the first 18 months of life,” Giedd explained. “We were really surprised to see a second wave of overproduction just before puberty, peaking around age 11 in girls, and 12 in boys.”

“The guiding principle is ‘use it or lose it,’ according to Giedd. The brain connections that are used will survive, and those that aren’t used will not. Kids who are actively participating in academics, music or sports will “wire” their brains to be better at those activities in the future. On the other hand, couch potatoes, beware: passive TV viewing and sitting around doing nothing will have long-term detrimental effects. Giedd points out that drugs and alcohol are especially dangerous at this pre-puberty time than later in life, because the brain is most vulnerable. “Huffing” of glue and inhalants, which is the most common form of abuse at this age (see Dec./Jan. Research Watch), is possibly the most dangerous.

What about kids who seem to care about nothing but the opposite sex and clothes? The surprising answer was that attracting the opposite sex is a big part of what the brain is wired for. (For boys, interest in sports is part of the mating ritual.) These interests are natural, and don’t harm brain development. In fact, Giedd says, human relations are challenging and complex, so that kind of brain activity is very stimulating and important. For example, dealing with interpersonal relationships is much more complicated than even the most complex video games. Participating in sports can help “wire” coordination and other skills that will enable a youth to grow up to be a star athlete. Developing musical skills at this age can also have life-long consequences. Giedd points out that this may be the reason that Olympic athletes and famous musicians have usually started at an early age.

Reading is another great activity for developing brains, because it requires so much activity: relying on memory, predicting what will happen next, and other generic activities are probably much more important than the actual content. It’s a good time to learn a new language, as well. Watching TV and movies can also be stimulating if it requires complex thinking rather than passive viewing.

The brain research is at a preliminary stage, so important questions like the impact of exposure to violence can’t be answered. But Giedd emphasizes that the important message is that youth workers should encourage kids to take advantage of the opportunity to “optimize their brains. ... Our first opportunity to do this — as infants — is out of our hands, dependent on our parents and caretakers. Kids can feel empowered knowing that they have another chance, and it’s up to them to make the most of it.”

Zuckerman, Diana. "Message from Teen Brains: It’s Not Too Late!" Research Watch review of Growth Patterns in the Developing Brain Detected by Using Continuum Mechanical Tensor Maps. Youth Today, April 2000, p. 22.

©2000 Youth Today. Reprinted with permission from Youth Today. All rights reserved.